EVANGELION: PURGATORY
by NeonGensis
Summary: The Third Impact in 2015 left few survivors and even fewer hopes to be found- but among them were Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley. This is theirs and Mankind's story of survival, and of everything that follows after "End of Evangelion."
1. Prologue: Weaving a Story

EVANGELION : PURGATORY  
Begun on October 29, 2004 

Written by Miguel A. L. Esquivel 

All characters created and owned by Gainax and Evangelion Project, except those created specifically for this story. Please read and review. 

-

Taken from Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 20- "Weaving a Story: Oral Stage." Just to refresh your memories, Shinji has just been absorbed into Evangelion Unit One after achieving 400 synchronization. 

** -DATE UNKNOWN, 2016 AD-  
COMMAND CENTER, NERV HEADQUARTERS  
TOKYO-3, JAPAN**

Maya Ibuki's fingers blurred over her keyboard, cranking out line after line of computer programming. Her eyes alternated scanning the holographic screen before her and referring to the clipboard with sheets upon sheets of test data on Evangelion Unit-One. Her brow wrinkled slightly, however, as she hit the "Enter" button and the overhead monitors flashed a "REJECTION" sign in bold orange letters. 

Maya sighed and slumped a little further into her seat, frustrated. "It's hopeless, after all," she sighed, and rubbed at her eyes. "The signal for ejecting the entry plug isn't accepted." 

She looked over her shoulder at her sempai, her mentor and boss, Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, standing behind her. 

She picked up Maya's clipboard and casually flipped through the pages, her eyes and face drained of all readable emotion. Just like the rest of us, Maya thought. 

"How about the backup and the dummy signal?" 

Maya gave a start, but her sempai gave no notice of having noticed, if she did. She chided herself for losing her head over such a trivial matter. "They are also rejected. Even the direct circuit is disconnected," she said, recovering a little. 

"The video circuit is connected," Makoto called out from his station. "I'll transfer it to the main monitor." 

There was a pregnant pause as everyone within the command center stopped working and looked up at the huge holo-grid. Suddenly, there appeared an immense image from within the entry plug, hovering thirty feet in the air. 

"Aaahhh!" Everyone inhaled sharply, shocked or alarmed, or both, at what they saw. 

It was the entry plug, true, but there was something seriously wrong. Where Shinji was supposed to be, there was nothing but his plug suit, floating limply in a sea of orange LCL. Bubbles were starting to form inside the liquid, a sign of contaminants within the plug; Shinji had been inside the once-berserker, now-dormant Eva for nearly two days now. 

Misato Katsuragi, the Chief Tactical Officer, stared wide-eyed in horror at the image. Her left cheek twitched. "What...is...this?" she said slowly, afraid she'd scream. 

Dr. Akagi bent over Maya's keyboard, typing in a few things with her left hand while consulting the clipboard. "This is the true nature of 400 synchronization." 

Misato turned and leaned against a nearby desk, picking up her coffee mug, which long ago had turned cold. If she left her hands to do nothing, she was desperately afraid they'd shake uncontrollably. Either that, or they'd fly towards Ritsuko's neck, which she really wanted to do right now. "I can't believe it! What the hell happened to Shinji-kun?" 

"He has been taken into Eva-01," Ritsuko replied. 

"What do you mean? What is Eva!" 

Ritsuko straightened from her work and regarded Misato with level, penetrating eyes behind her glasses. "That which was created by humans in the human image. I can't say it in any other way." 

"Created by humans? You only copied what you found in Antarctica back then...right?" She paused and bit on her lower lip. "Or is it the original? I don't understand." 

"It isn't just a copy. A human will is within it." 

Behind her, Misato's eyes narrowed at the corners. "Do you mean that this was because of someone's will? 

"Or Eva's," Ritsuko said simply. 

Misato slammed the mug onto the desk, not caring how it splashed over the various documents strewn across the desk, or how it stained her dress. "Do something! You created it, didn't you? Take responsibility!" 

Ritsuko said nothing to her pleading, emotionally wrecked only friend, but simply averted her eyes, unable to meet her desperate gaze.


	2. Weaving a Story II

-TWO DAYS AFTERWARDS-  
EVANGELION UNIT-ONE HOLDING CAGE  
NERV HEADQUARTERS-

Misato Katsuragi and Dr. Ritsuko Akagi shivered, despite the heavy fur-trimmed parka jackets they wore. Trying to remain as unobtrusive as possible, Maya stood to the side.They watched, almost solemnly, from a balcony as the giant Evangelion was being scrubbed down and jet-washed. 

"How is the salvaging project for Shinji-kun?" Misato finally asked. 

Ritsuko shrugged. "Well, what might be called Shinji-kun's life still exists." 

Misato glanced sideways at the other woman. "Will life be respected this time?" 

"Losing Shinji-kun is out of the question now." 

"I don't know," Misato said slowly. "What Nerv wants isn't his life, but Unit One as their tool." 

"I don't deny it," Ritsuko said simply. 

An awkward pause hung in the air. Maya Ibuki squirmed uncomfortably, and finally said, "Shinji-kun's body is supposed to be drifting in the entry plug in a quantum form, because it lost its ego-border." 

Misato turned towards the young engineer. "You mean that Shinji has become something which we can't identify visibly?" 

"Exactly," Maya said, wishing she'd never spoken up. "The LCL ingredients in the plug changed chemically, and are now similar to the sea water of the primitive earth." 

"Primordial soup...," Misato breathed, thoughtfully. 

"All of the materials which formed Shinji-kun are still in the plug," Ritsuko added, nodding towards the looming figure of the Evangelion. "What could be called his soul exits there, too. In fact, his ego image gives pseudo-substance to his plugsuit." 

"Salvaging means reconstructing his body and fixing his soul into it," Maya continued for her sempai. 

"Is that possible?" Misato's eyes grew wide with hope. 

"With Magi's support," Ritsuko nodded. 

Misato lowered her head, as though a thought just occurred to her. "You're talking about the theory, aren't you? Nobody knows what will happen without trying." 

"There's one more thing, though," Ritsuko said. Misato whirled around to face her. "All the science in the world is no good to us, if Shinji decides to disappear. He has to want to come back. He has to have something to come back to." 

Misato said nothing. 

"Does he have something to come back to? Does he have any reason to want to remain here with us?" Ritsuko said as she carefully watched Misato's face, and a corner of her lips turned up in what might have been a half-smile. 


	3. Weaving a Story III

-THE SAME DAY, TIME UNKNOWN- INSIDE EVANGELION UNIT-ONE ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE  
  
Slowly, Shinji Ikari opened his eyes to the world. He had no eyes, but he could see; he had no body, but he was slowly becoming aware of everything around him. He was...floating. The water around him was warm and thick, and light rippled in the orange (orange?) water, somewhere far, far above, though Shinji couldn't see from where. In his head (or what should have been a head), his own voice echoed distantly.  
  
What's this? Where am I? Entryplug of Unit One? No one is here. I'm not. What's this? Shinji stared, as far in the distance in the water, a light began to flicker, and images flashed across his vision. They slowly resolved into place, and slowly, Shinji understood who they were.  
  
Maya Ibuki. Kensuke Aida. Ritsuko Akagi. Hikari Horaki. Shigeru Aoba. Sensei. Uncle. Toji Suzuhara. Rei Ayanami. Asuka Langley. Misato Katsuragi. Pen-Pen. Kaji Ryouji. Over and over and over and over.  
  
What's this? What's this? I don't know. These people. Yes. The people who I know, the people who know me. I see. They are all my world. What's this? I don't know it, even though this is my world.   
  
The flickers came faster and faster, and suddenly Shinji understood what they were. Angels. Sachiel. Shamshel. Ramiel. Gaghiel. Israfel. Sandalphon. Matarael. Sahaquiel. Iruel. Leliel. Bardiel. Zeruel. Shinji didn't know how he knew them, but their names flashed unceasingly, alongside the images of the Angels, whether they came from newspapers or photos he'd seen, or whether the images came from when he was in the entry plug itslef, fighting them directly.  
  
An image from outside. An unpleasant image. I see. An enemy. ENEMY, ENEMY, ENEMY, ENEMY. Our enemies called Angels which have angelic names. The targets of Eva and Nerv. Revenge for Misato's father. Why am I fighting? I do it even though it leads to such bitter experiences.   
  
Unbidden, his co-pilot, Asuka Sohryu Langley, dissolved into the air. She was in her plug-suit, and her fists were placed haughtily on her hips. "Are you an idiot?," she asked him. "Unknown enemies are coming and attacking us, you know. Of course we have to deal with a lot of unexpected difficulties."  
  
I don't need a reason. I shouldn't think about it? ENEMY,ENEMY, ENEMY, ENEMY, EVERYONE IS AN ENEMY! Something threatening me, us. That's an ENEMY. Definitely. Nobody will think badly of me if I protect my own life, our lives! ENEMY, ENEMY, ENEMY, ENEMY. My ENEMY! My ENEMY! Father!  
  
Suddenly, looming before him, Gendo Ikari stood. His broad-shouldered frame blocked out the light, which glinted off his glasses and rendered his face unreadable. Shinji fought the urge to take a step backwards.  
  
Are you telling me to get into this and experience terrible things, Father? Behind them, Eva Unit-1 watched, silently as a stone.  
  
"Yes."  
  
What! I won't. What are you saying now?! Father, can't you need me?  
  
"I called you out of necessity," Gendo simply stated.  
  
Why me?  
  
"Because other humans can't."  
  
I can't. I can't do that. I've never seen it or heard about it before. No. I knew about it. I remember. I knew about Eva. And then I ran away from Father and Mother.  
  
Suddenly, everything changed again. Now he stood in an elevator, cold and lonely save for another person standing in front of him, but with their back turned to him. Muzak piped in from overhead speakers, as the background noise of whirring elevator cables droned on. Slowly, Shinji realized it was just Ayanami in her aqua school uniform.   
  
Ever so slightly, she turned her head towards him. "What is loneliness?" she asked, her voice a whisper.  
  
I've never known it. But I seem to know it now.  
  
"What is happiness?" she asked again, and Shinji caught himself staring at her pale, thin lips.  
  
I've never known it. But I seem to know it now.  
  
"Are others kind to you?"  
  
He hesitated, but answered, Yes.  
  
"Why?"  
  
Shinji clenched his fist, and the world changed once more. He was in his plug suit now, and he was screaming, though he didn't know why. It's because I'm a pilot of Eva. They are kind to me because I get into Eva. It's the reason why I can stay here. It's all that supports me. So I must get into Eva.  
  
"Get into?" she asked, without raising her voice in the slightest.  
  
Shinji ignored her, as the images of the Angels played in his mind once more. His spittle flew and flecked across his face, and he tightened his fists into balls as, slowly, his father flickered before his eyes. Enemy. Yes, I must fight against the ones which everyone calls the Enemy.  
  
"Fight," she said.  
  
I must win. Yes, I mustn't lose. I must get into Eva as they say, and I must win as they say. Otherwise, nobody, nobody, nobody... His voice faded into a soft whimper. 


	4. Weaving a Story IV

"Do your best," Misato cheered. Shinji jerked his head up and caught her face smiling at him, with the warmth of the sun. "Hang in there!"  
  
"What are you doing?! Do it right!" Asuka griped, pointing a finger at him accusingly.  
  
Beside him, Toji wrapped an arm around his shoulder. "Go for it!"  
  
"Good luck!" Kensuke said, on his other side.  
  
"Well done, Shinji."  
  
Everyone disappeared as once again, Gendo Ikari's face loomed before him. It wasn't menacing, by any means, but Shinji never felt like that was how a father's face should look like. It felt...wrong.  
  
Misato-san, Ritsuko-san, Asuka, Toji, Kensuke and Father praise me. They praise me because I get into Eva. The guys like me. Everyone tells me to get into it. Father does. I'll show him what I can do.  
  
"Do your best," Misato's voice reminded him, from somewhere.  
  
I'm doing my best. I am. Please be kind to me. I've been fighting so much. I'm fighting as well as I can. Take care of me, please. Be kind to me!  
  
"I'll be kind to you." Suddenly, Misato was in front of him. She was naked, and she was smiling. Her vision was blurred, somehow, but Shinji couldn't describe it. Slowly, she leaned forward (Shinji watched as her hair fell forward, covering her shining eyes slightly) and ran her nails up his thighs as she drew closer to his face.   
  
"Do you want to become one with me? Do you want us to become one in body and soul? It feels so wonderful. I'm ready. I'm always ready," she said, and vanished.  
  
"Hey, stupid Shinji." He froze, for a moment, as Asuka took Misato's place. The words were familiar, but now she was smiling at him, also naked. "Do you want to become one with me? Do you want us to become one in body and soul? It feels so wonderful." She leaned forward and parted her lips to take him... "I'm asking you. Come on!"  
  
Shinji closed his eyes, and was startled only a little when Asuka disappeared and only Rei lay before him, smiling nakedly. "Ikari-kun. Do you want to become one with me? Do you want us to become one in body and soul? It feels so wonderful. Ikari-kun."  
  
"Do you want to become one with me?" Misato asked.  
  
"Do you want us to become one in body and soul?" Asuka asked.  
  
"It feels so wonderful," Rei said, smiling.  
  
"Come on, now. Relax," said Misato, lowering her head over his member. "Make your mind free."  
  
NO! I can't get it. I can't get it. I, I ...  
  
As one, the three women taunted him, teased him. "What do you want?" they asked, in unison. "What do you want? What do you want?"  
  
"What do you want?" Yui Ikari asked her son.  
  
Shinji's eyes snapped open wide at his mother's voice, but then all became dark.  
  
In Eva, Shinji said. In Eva? I've gotten into Eva again, haven't I? Why? He blinked, and suddenly he stood in front of the train station, where he first arrived, and twice now, threatened to leave.  
  
"You won't get into Eva any more?" Misato leaned casually against her car, her blue beat-up Renault Alpine, but the look in her eyes was anything but. Her gaze was harsh, piercing, and searched his own.  
  
I decided that I'd never get into Eva again?  
  
"Nevertheless, you did. Into Eva-01," she said flatly.  
  
Ah!  
  
"Shinji-kun, you are here because you got into Eva." Misato's brow furrowed slightly, creasing her smooth forehead. "Because you got into Eva, you became what you are. You can't deny that, the fact that you got into Eva, nor what you were, in your past life."  
  
I, I ... 


	5. Weaving a Story V, end of Prologue

-THE SAME DAY, TIME UNKNOWN- NERV COMMAND CENTER, THE BRIDGE TOKYO-3, JAPAN  
  
"Eva rejected the signal!" Maya called to her sempai. Her fingers dashed over the keyboard, trying to compensate where her data showed they were going wrong. Somehow it didn't seem enough.  
  
Shigeru Aoba wiped his brow and continued monitoring Shinji's wildly-fluctuating vital-signs, from within Eva Unit-One. "His ego formation in the LCL is breaking up!"  
  
"Pressure is increasing in the plug!" Makoto said directly after Shigeru.   
  
"Stop all operations!" Ritsuko commanded. The project to retrieve Shinji from the Eva may have failed, but she'd be damned if she'd let him disappear forever. Better to abort now, and try again later after studying the data.   
  
"Cut the power supply!"  
  
"No good. The plug has activated," Maya screamed. As one, they stared in horror at the monitor screens as the entry plug unscrewed itself, and released the cockpit, spewing forth its contents. Yellow LCL gushed over its sides, and Shinji's empty plugsuit floated limply atop its foam.   
  
Misato's fists tightened into balls. "Shinji-kun!" she screamed.  
  
-THE SAME DAY, TIME UNKNOWN- WITHIN EVANGELION UNIT-ONE ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE  
  
Mother... Shinji's bodiless thoughts floated noiselessly. He wanted to scream for joy, to throw his hands in adulation, but held his breath, hoping to hear the other voices alongside him.  
  
"Have you decided?" Yui asked, but not to Shinji.  
  
"I'll name it Shinji if it's a boy," Gendo Ikari said. His voice had none of the hardness or loneliness in it. It was the voice of a husband talking to his wife. It was a fatherly voice. "I'll name it Shinji if it's a boy," he said again, "And Rei if it's a girl."  
  
Though he couldn't see them, Shinji could see smiles draw across both their faces, even his father's. "Shinji. Rei. Beautiful names," Yui said.  
  
Mother...  
  
-THE SAME DAY- EVANGELION UNIT-ONE HOLDING CAGE  
  
Misato had run from the command center down to the holding cage, not caring who got in her way. She was ranked as a Major, true, and thus they'd have gotten out of her way in any case, but she still ran, shoving aside people in her rush.  
  
When she got to the holding cage, she saw that none of the engineers dared to move. Shinji's ingredients were somewhere in that fluid, and none dared to approach it, save Misato.  
  
She ran, and threw herself before the ejected entry plug, not caring how the chemicals stained her red dress, or soaked straight through her leggings. She'd been trying not to cry all the way down to the cage, but she didn't care anymore who saw her.  
  
The LCL gave her skin a slight itch as she pressed the empty suit against her breast, and the liquids were still warm, straight out of the entry plug. She raised her eyes to the heavens, searching for a prayer to call the poor boy back to her, but all she saw were the impassive eyes of Dr. Akagi staring down at her, watching over her.  
  
"What good is science if it can't save even one person," she pleaded to no one in particular. "Give back Shinji-kun! Give him back...!"  
  
WITHIN EVANGELION UNIT-ONE ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE  
  
Smell. I smell someone Shinji thought. He could see his body again, and his brown hair waved softly in the unseen currents of wherever it was he was in. Misato-san? Ayanami? No, it doesn't smell like them. I know. It smells like Mother.  
  
"It is a pity that this child will live after Second Impact, in this Hell," Gendo's voice continued, speaking to his wife.  
  
An image dissolved into view. A young boy suckled at his mother's exposed breast. There was no way for him to know it, but Shinji knew that the newborn was himself.  
  
"Well. If he wants to live, anywhere becomes Heaven," Yui's voice replied softly, lovingly. "Because if he really lives, he will find the chance for happiness anywhere."  
  
Gendo paused, and Shinji could sense him smiling. "I see," he said simply. "You may be right."  
  
Mother.  
  
Shinji saw a light, far off in the distance. It flickered faintly, and it was hard to see, but it was calling him, he knew it.  
  
Mother, he thought, as he approached it, floating weightlessly. I have to go back.... I have things to do. I have to find my happiness. I'll see you again, though.  
  
Mother!  
  
And then the world turned white. 


	6. PURGATORY: New Genesis

-2016, TIME UNKNOWN UNKNOWN PLACE-  
  
Shinji Ikari opened his eyes, and the world was once more.  
  
It took him a few minutes to realize he was awake, or at least aware, although he wasn't sure if he was dead or not. He was laying down, somewhere-- his hands, at his sides, moved, and raked coarse gritty sand betweens his fingers. An ululating roar from all around turned out to be the oacean, its waves breaking and lapping against the shore. He saw a field of purple sky, fading to a deep blood color around the horizons, like a horrific welt in the sky.  
  
Whether it was dusk or dawn, Shinji neither cared nor knew.  
  
Slowly, gingerly, he turned his head to the left.  
  
Asuka Soryuu Langley stared at him, her face blank and expressionless, the left eye hidden by a gauze bandage that looked like it had been cleaned recently.  
  
"Ikari," she said, her voice escaping from her cracked bloodless lips like a breeze sighing through a tree.  
  
Shinji sat up, carefully, in case anything was broken, and was more than a little relieved and curious when nothing was.  
  
He looked to the left and only saw an endless stretch of beach, the sand glistening like salt crystals in the scarce light. Rising out of the orange-tinged ocean like a lost scarecrow stood silhouetted monolithic figures, arms stretched out from its sides in a posture of mock penitance. It took Shinji a moment to realize they were the white Mass-Production Evangelions, but nothing fazed him anymore.  
  
Is this all a dream? he heard, but wasn't sure if that was his own voice, or Asuka's, laying beside him.  
  
He looked at her, and under her bandages, he saw his own blank expression reflected back at him. Her right arm was bound together in a sling, he just noticed, and her red hair fanned out on the sand like a scarlet halo.  
  
It reminded him exactly how Ayanami looked, the first time he met her. She had fallen off her gurney as the Third Angel's attack shook the GeoFront, and she lay splayed on the Evangelion holding docks like a discarded doll.  
  
Ayanami.  
  
The name came unbidden, and he blinked, almost reeling backwards.  
  
He didn't remember if the vision was real or a hallucination, but an image slowly emerged in his mind-- a giant Rei Ayanami, her bare albino's skin unblemished and glowing like fresh-laden snow. He was in the Evangelion-- or was he?-- floating in midair, and Ayanami was reaching out for him. When he looked at her again, her face was gaunt, her cheeks hollowed out, and her pupils oily impenetrable black orbs, in that horrific, beautiful face.  
  
Ayanami. What are you?  
  
Shinji wrapped his hands around Asuka's neck, and began squeezing. Tiny noises escaped from her, and he squeezed harder, wanting to hear her whimper, or scream, or beg for an end, one way or another.  
  
His mouth twisted into a snarling, silent rictus.  
  
"Shi...inji," she managed to say.  
  
His eyes snapped wide open, as he realized what he was doing-- either that, or he realized that it wasn't Ayanami he was hurting.  
  
He collapsed over her still form, but he did not remove his fingers from her neck. His hair cast shadows over her eyes.  
  
"I'm sorry," he whispered, his cheek barely touching hers.   
  
She said nothing in return, but only continued to stare skywards, not seeing him. Two shooting stars traced brilliant trails across the gangrene heavens, appearing and disappearing like a weak sodium flare.  
  
"I hate myself," he said, to no one in particular. 


	7. Penitance

He didn't recall how long he was at it, but Asuka had barely moved all the while, although she did try to fight him at first.  
  
He hadn't bothered to remove her shirt, but her did get her jeans and cotton panties down to her ankles. He fumbled, clumsily, inexperienced, at her too-still form, his rough groping fingers leaving tell-tale red marks on her small breasts and up her thighs. He tried sucking at her undeveloped cinammon nipples, but seeing little point to it, he instead insinuated himself between her legs and resumed what he couldn't finish before.  
  
It seemed a lifetime ago, that moment when she was in the hospital.  
  
Her petite adolescent breasts shivered with each of his puny, adolescent thrusts, and through it all, she said not a word.  
  
Shinji wondered whether this was a good thing or not.  
  
When he finished, he arranged her bra and pulled up her panties, and re-zipped her jeans. He didn't bother tucking in her too-large t-shirt again, but he brushed off the sand from her, and lay back next to her, tired.  
  
He looked up at the brightening sky and discovered it was morning after all.  
  
Shinji looked at Asuka, who still hadn't said anything. A tiny tear welled up at the corner of her eyes. He watched it grow and, when it was too large to continue clinging, it rolled down the side of her face.  
  
"I love you," he said, feeling this was the appropriate thing to say.  
  
Asuka closed her eyes and pointedly tried to ignore him. More tears rolled down her cheeks, but she didn't give him the satisfaction of her childish sobs. 


	8. The Covenant

-ONE DAY LATER, 2016 UNKNOWN PLACE, JAPAN-  
  
The next day-- or what Shinji presumed was the next day, for the color of the sky rarely changed-- snow fell across Japan for the first time in 15 years.  
  
Shinji stared at the flakes as they cascaded, swirling down upon him and Asuka. He had some idea what they were, but the way they tickled his skin was unknown to him. Asuka simply watched him, curiously, though at a distance. She had started walking again, but always maintained the same distance from him.   
  
For food, they harvested what fish they could from the oceans that were beginning to wash ashore, making sure to check against signs of decay. They roasted them on sticks, and ate them in silence, always on opposite sides of the fire.  
  
The third day, Shinji began making forays inland, to see what-- and more importantly, who-- might have been left in this world. Asuka sat by the fire, rocking on her haunches. Whenever Shinji left or returned, she was always in the same position.  
  
The snow had finally stopped, dusting everything, but it wasn't cold enough for it to remain very long.  
  
On his fourth journey outward-- his trips were elliptical in shape and grew with every pass-- Shinji found a road. Power lines ran parallel to it, and as he walked along-- in a random direction, for, like time, a sense of destination was now pointless-- he saw a murder of crows gathered along the slackened wires.  
  
He came across a store, after walking what felt like 20 minutes. Along the way, straggly wayside bushes gave way to fields of reeds to long grass and trees, and sand slowly became soil once again. The store was like them, Shinji decided, and, sorry as it looked, he knew that this store was the first in what would surely become civilization, if he continued down the road.  
  
For now, it was enough.  
  
Curiously, the door was unlocked, although it did creak in protest as he opened it. The lights were still on, although several were blown out, and in the center of the center room, a ceiling fan churned the dead air listlessly. There were traces of animals having been there, like the gnaw marks on the puckering fruit and droppings from smaller animals. But at least the store was otherwise stocked.  
  
"Excuse me for intruding!" he called out, startled at the sound of his own voice. He didn't think anyone was home, but it couldn't hurt to--  
  
splish!  
  
Shinji paused, and looked down at the puddle he stepped in. Not too far away, in the same pool of liquid, clothes lay rumpled, but arranged like a chalk outline of a corpse. As strange as that was in itself, however, Shinji continued squinting at the liquid. It reminded him of... LCL?  
  
After a moment, he shrugged and continued.  
  
There were two more similar puddles-- and clothes, although one set was for a woman-- in the aisles. Finally, though, he found what he was looking for. He greedily gulped down the bottle of water, and then another, licking his chapped dehydrated lips.  
  
He fetched a shopping cart and returned to the aisle, filling it with dozens of water bottles and jugs, and in the next aisle, canned foods.  
  
Behind the counter, he wrote his name and Misato Katsuragi's address-- his caretaker and commanding officer-- as well as a list of everything he took, and a calculated total. Then, he tacked the I.O.U. to a wall and set off into the fast-fading day. 


	9. Discovery

Shinji Ikari was thankful as he returned to the beach site-- the shopping cart, he discovered, had a ricketty wheel that wanted to go in the opposite direction of whichever way he was pushing, and the cart, filled to the brim with rations, seemed to have doubled in weight. The sun was setting in the west, tinging the already-orange water with a golden veneer.  
  
As he approached the site, he slowed the cart and came to a stop, though not out of exhaustion. He looked again, and blinked.  
  
There was a silhouette of a man, sitting on a log in front of the fire next to Asuka.  
  
Shinji forgot all about the cart and its load by the roadside, as he ran to them, his feet hardly slowed down by the sand that seemed to suck at his every step. The man appeared to be about Kaji-san's age, although there was a bit of a pouch on his stomach, and he wore glasses. His hair was combed to the side, and other than the several soil stains across his shirt and his knees, he seemed rather animated as he spoke, flourishing his hands to express his point. Asuka's back was turned to Shinji, but she seemed to not say anything, only nodding and appearing to smile weakly.  
  
"Asuka!" Shinji called as he ran to them. "Asuka! Are you okay?"  
  
The two of them looked up, surprised at the intrusion, and at the sound of his voice. Shinji hoped that Asuka was alright, but when she turned around, she regarded him only with a level, emotionless look. He came a stop a few feet away from them, but still he fought the urge to take a step back from those cold blue eyes of hers.  
  
The man, however, seemed less perturbed, and actually brightened up at his presence. "Ah, there you are!" he said, rising. He came over to Shinji, and gave a cursory look-over, and, satisfied, patted him on the shoulder. "I wasn't sure whether you were okay or not. I'm sorry I had to leave you two like that, but I was sure you two were going to be okay for a while. I just hadn't counted on being held up, when I went back to the city."  
  
"Huh?" Shinji scrunched up his face, and looked into his eyes. "Who are you? Do I know you?"  
  
The man blinked, and a thought seemed to come to him. "Oh, yes. I'm sorry about that. I'm the one who found you two, washed up on the shore like that. My name's Howard. Howard La."  
  
"That's an unusual name," Shinji admitted, then caught himself. "Sorry."  
  
"Don't be," the man said, laughing. "I may not look it, but I'm Chinese. I was a teacher at your school. I taught chemistry at your school."  
  
"How do you know what school I go to?" Then, before Howard could reply, Shinji added, "What do you mean you're the one who found us?"  
  
"Who do you think fixed her up?" he thumbed at Asuka, slightly annoyed. "She was quite a mess, too, if I do say so. I'm afraid her left eye's a goner. Can't really say much better of her right arm. But at least she stopped bleeding."  
  
"You did that?"  
  
"Yep. I left you two for a quick supply run, into the city. Everyone else is gone, it looks like, though I did see what looked like one or two traces of other survivors. I don't know where anyone else went. I don't know how I made it, or, for that matter, how you two made it either."  
  
The man smiled at Shinji for a moment, and looked up, surprised to see the abandoned cart, still by the roadside.   
  
"I'm famished," he said, and smiled at Shinji. "I found a few things, but couldn't carry them over like you did, with that cart. C'mon, help me out with that, and then we can talk. I'm sure there's a lot of things you want to know, and though I don't have any of the answers, it'd do us all good to mull things over." 


	10. The Last

The moon and stars were just starting to appear in the purple-welted skies by the time Shinji and Howard brought the shopping cart full of groceries over by the fire on the sands. Together they had taken opposite ends of the cart, and lopsidedly crab-walked the distance. Shinji grunted at the unexpected heaviness, but did his best without protesting. Asuka merely followed silently, still at a distance from the two men as she picked up all the fallen items.  
  
They ate sparingly out of some canned foods and nursed their bottles of water, except for Asuka who greedily gulped down several of them before finally appearing satisfied. Without being asked to, the teacher started telling them about life back in the city, how evidence pointed to others still being there, though he couldn't find where. Shinji's heart rose at the news, but fell again when he doubted that Misato and his friends would be among them.  
  
As the night drew on, and a chill settled in, it was several minutes before any of them noticed it had begun snowing again.  
  
Shinji knew Howard was staring at him and Asuka, although he tried not to notice. Instead, he wondered about Misato, and Ritsuko and the rest of them, and, strangely enough, his father. Asuka merely looked catatonic, as usual the last few days.   
  
"So how did you survive?" Shinji suddenly asked, surprising him and Howard.  
  
The older man blinked for a second, and began rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "To tell the truth, I don't know. I remember the very last few hours before...before everything changed," he said, softly, with a faraway look in his eyes. He started fingering his left hand, where, Shinji noticed, he had a wedding band. He was married?  
  
"I was on a commuter train, trying to get home to my wife and daughter," he said. "Little Keiko had been feeling sick the last couple of days, and I was in a rush to see her. I'd even brought her a teddy bear, though I left that behind, somewhere in my empty home. Just like the rest of my apartment building, the block...hell, the entire city!"  
  
There was a moment of awkward silence before Shinji hesitantly asked, "Did you feel a need? A great need to see to, or go back to," he tried explaining when his teacher looked at him funny.  
  
"My daughter, I suppose," Howard said, not sure where Shinji was going.  
  
Shinji nodded. "I don't really undestand it myself. But I remember someone saying that there has to be a reason to want to return or come back to. A great need or something like that.  
  
"Maybe it's nothing at all. Maybe it's just something stupid," he hastily corrected himself when the other man simply stared blankly.  
  
Howard La nodded, albeit slowly. "No, I suppose that my daughter feeling sick was indeed enough to...bring me back. I remember seeing a bright light, and then Ayanami, looking at me from the back of the train car I was riding."  
  
"Ayanami?" Shinji said, forcing himself to not look out over the waters, where the albino's massive head stared half out of the water like a rock.  
  
"Yes, I thought it was very strange. And then... all of a sudden, I felt very free, but I knew something wasn't right." A light suddenly dawned in his eyes. "The orange puddles! I--- I became that! We all did! My God!" Howard's face contorted into utter confusion, as he pulled back the sides of his head in order to concentrate.  
  
"The LCL?" Shinji asked, suddenly becoming very alarmed. "The orange puddles? You saw more of those too?"  
  
"LCL?" he asked, but resisted asking about it when Shinji nodded his head hurriedly. "The puddles...yeah. I saw more of those. Entire blocks are submerged just because the liquid pooled at the lowest points in the city. How do you know what it is?"  
  
Shinji opened his mouth, but caught himself, not sure if that information was confidential. Or if it even mattered anymore.  
  
Howard saw his hesitation, and understood, nodding. "It has to do with your....job, doesn't it?"  
  
Shinji looked down at the hands in his lap. "Job? What job?" On the far side of the fire, Asuka's head lifted, alarmed eyes revealing the first emotional response from her in days.  
  
The older man smiled. "It's okay. You don't have to play dumb. I know about it... you, NERV, the Evangelions. I know about you, Ms. Langley over there, Ayanami, and even Suzuhara. I don't know all of it, and I don't think I ever will, but I know. The whole school did. Hell, sometimes I wonder if this entire city was built just for the secret that is Nerv.  
  
"The point is," he continued, "you kids were our only hope against the Angels." He poked at the fire with a long stick, scattering firefly embers into the air, then took out a silver cross around his neck. After a long moment of looking at it without expression, he closed his eyes as he kissed it reverently, then put it away.  
  
"You were our only hope, against demonic Angels." He gestured around him, at the tainted LCL-diluted waters and the dozens, if not hundreds, of dead fish laying with their pale bellies against the fine salt-white shoreline, and at the huge unnatural bruise of a sky. "This is our legacy, thanks to you."  
  
Shinji stood up to protest, hands clutched into fists at his sides, but the teacher pressed on, calmly but with complete seriousness in his voice and his look.  
  
"And the Rapture has taken place. We're the ones who've been left behind." 


	11. The Darkness at Bay

For long moments, silence, save for the crackling of the kindling over the makeshift fire, hung in the air as Howard and Shinji regarded each other, weighing each other.  
  
Shinji was the first to look away. "Why did you say those words?"  
  
The chemistry teacher turned his eyes downwards, into the fire so the lights danced in his eyes. "No reason. In the bible, it's said that the time of judgement would begin with the rapture, when all the unworthy were cast out from heaven while the chosen were pulled from among us." He laughed wryly. "I guess we lucked out, then huh?  
  
"Oh, no need to give me those looks," he said, smiling to lighten the mood, though the sentiment never reached his eyes. "They're stories. Myths. That's all."  
  
After a long moment, Shinji sat down. Around his neck but under his shirt, he could feel Misato's white cross seemingly burn on his chest. "Stories? Can they really be stories? The world was plagued by Angel attacks, after all."   
  
"That," Howard said, tossing his emptied water bottle into the fire, "is just a name we provided. Even I'm not sure who coined the term for those...monsters. But I hardly doubt those Angels were the religious kind. I believe in the Bible, but even then a lot of the things are farfetched."  
  
"So you don't believe in what the Bible says?" Shinji titled his head, trying to ignore the black acrid smoke that came from the melting plastic.   
  
"It's not that. Make no mistake that I'm a Christian. However, I suppose that, being a scientist, or at least a teacher of the sciences, I find it more likely that the Bible is a collection of stories told to children, or around fires just like this, to keep the darkness and the cold away. To keep the fire in here," he said, and tapped his chest, over his heart, "burning. With hope.  
  
"And speaking of stories, it'd be a shame to waste this perfectly good fire." Howard La smiled again, and this time it seemed genuine. "When I was younger, we used to tell stories around camp fires just like this. This was before, of course, the Second Impact. In fact, I think the last time I went camping was a few months of the Second Impact.  
  
"Do you know any stories to tell?" the teacher asked. When Shinji shook his head, and Asuka didn't reply, he poked the fire with a long stick to shift the logs, and said, "Do you mind if I tell one?"  
  
Shinji watched the older man wordlessly, as did Asuka.  
  
"Okay, I'll tell you a myth of my own. Once upon a time, long, long ago, a comet came down to Earth in the shape of a giant man of light. During this time, the earth was little more than a ball of dust and fire, still basking in the too-hot star that is our sun, and barren and void of anything but rocks and empty spaces.  
  
"Now, this comet man shat in the hot soil under the sun, and his turds became men. Us, but only men. But still there was nothing on this earth. Feed us, his children said of him, give us nourishment.  
  
"The comet-man took great offense to their insolence, and fought with the eldest of his children. The child bested his father, who then said, 'Cut off my head, and bury it in the rock, and in three days' time, I will feed you all you may eat, till your bellies burst.'"  
  
"Well, that was a stupid thing to do--" Shinji began, but cut off his words as Howard raised his hand to forestall him.  
  
"So the hungry children took the weapons they had made, and sliced off their father's head, and, as instructed, buried it in the hard, hot soil. As promised, their father changed the land to sustain the people, who by this time had begun to grow into uncountable masses. His body became the mountains, and his blood became the rivers and the oceans. His hair became a crop of corn, which fed the his children, and became the plants and trees of the sky. From his flesh arose the animals, and from the cave of his mouth came a woman. The first woman.  
  
"The ages came and went, and the children of the comet-man propagated and ruled the earth. The children of the comet-man flourish still in you," he pointed at Asuka and Shinji, then at himself, "and me."  
  
Howard sat back, satisfied with his story, but after a moment of expectant silence, added, "The end" for their benefit.  
  
He asked, "So what do you think?"  
  
"That was, um, a nice story," Shinji began after a while. "But who was that first woman? And why did the comet's kids have to kill him? It seems like such a horrible thing to do."  
  
"Who knows?" Howard waved his hand, as if to brush away trivial questions. "It's probably some archetypal Oedipal angst or something. The important thing was the comet man's sacrifice restored the land. It's a myth. That's just how these things go."  
  
Shinji glanced sideways at Asuka, who had an incredulous look on her face, despite the bandages over her eye and brow.  
  
"It was kind of a stupid story," he said to the older man. "Sorry."  
  
Howard folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the shopping cart. "Maybe I'm not a good storyteller. I certainly liked it when someone told it to m--- Huh?"   
  
Suddenly he stood up, kickinig sand all over the place. Shinji was about to complain about the sand that went into his eyes, but held his breath when Howard shot him a silencing, almost-crazed look.  
  
"Do you hear it?" he asked, after a moment. Asuka put her water bottle by her feet, and stood next to Shinji, looking around worriedly.   
  
Shinji was about to ask what exactly he was supposed to hear over the crash and roar of the ceaseless waves, when he caught it, too-- the roar of an engine, carried on the evening breeze. A car! People!, the realization crashed down into his head.  
  
"We've got to get their attention," Shinji exclaimed. He started throwing anything flammable from the cart onto the fire.   
  
"Hey, what are you doing? That's our food!" Howard grabbed Shinji as he was about to toss some more cardboard packages onto the fire. "You can't put that kind of stuff in there-- it'll flare, sure, but you'll only kill off the fire faster if you keep doing that!" He paused as he saw the intent glare in the boy's eyes.  
  
"We can always get some more. I know where. But if we have a chance to call more people over to our location, maybe we can get out of here!"  
  
"And what if they're people we can't trust? What if they're hunting us down, scavenging us for our own supplies here?" Howard looked over his shoulder, worried, as the engine's roar seemed to grow louder and louder, as if it were only a few dunes away.  
  
"And what if they're not?" Shinji's words slammed into the teacher's head, and he looked at him with new eyes. 


	12. A Light in the Darkness

"You're right," he conceded after a moment. "But at least I've got some sort of protection," he added, as he whipped out a pistol tucked into the front of his pants, underneath his shirt. "Keep fueling the fire-- put in anything that burns, even my knapsack. If they have come to kill us and take our things, allow me to tell you ahead of time that I told you so."  
  
Shinji returned the grin that had suddenly appeared on the older man's face. "And if I'm right, then I told you so." And he turned and emptied the contents of Howard's back pack onto the fire, each notebook and shirt breathing new life into the already large fire. Asuka joined him, but when she went to unravel the bandaging around her head and arm, wincing with every motion, Shinji laid a hand on her forearm and shook his head.   
  
Howard watched them, nodding approvingly at the tall pillar of acrid smoke that seemed to glow even in the night air. Surely whomever was approaching would see it, now. He clicked off the safety of the gun, and trained it on the direction the approaching car was coming from.  
  
Car? Or truck, he asked himself. The noise was surely too great to be a simple car. And yet, few trucks would be able to navigate over the soft sands of the beach. "Here it comes, guys," he said to the kids, who stopped what they were doing and watched the same direction as he was.  
  
Howard got his answer, as two headlamps appeared, rocking back and forth violently as the vehicle tried to navigate over the dunes. It was a massive white military Hummer vehicle. Its headlights cast a beam brighter than the noonday sun through the night, and the engine roared as it came to a small bluff overlooking their position, and came to a stop.  
  
Suddenly a floodlamp atop the Hummer switched on, casting a spotlight on the three of them, and four doors opened in unison. Asuka and Shinji covered their eyes with their forearms, but Howard squinted straight into the lamp, his pistol aim barely wavering. Silhouetted figures jumped out of the vehicle and took their positions, and even in the darkness, Shinji could see they were training weapons on them-- rifles, semiautomatic pistols, machine guns.....  
  
"Put your weapon down now!" came a man's voice on a megaphone. "Lay down on the sand with your hands to your sides!"  
  
Asuka whipped her head towards Shinji, grinning excitedly, and immediately he recognized the voice. Before he could stop her, though, she took off, running towards the figures with a thankful and relieved expression on her face, each step kicking up sand in her wake.  
  
Shinji reached out for her, but it seemed as though things had suddenly began moving in slow motion. It was too late.  
  
The men on the bluff began firing on Asuka.   
  
"Stop! No! Damn you, stop!" cried the familiar voice over the megaphone in vain.  
  
"No!" Howard cried out, and Shinji wondered if his own scream was an echo of the teacher's, or vice-versa. Howard began firing wildly up to the silhouetted men, and managed to shoot out one of the glaring headlights, but by the time he had emptied his clip, he realized that the men above had already stopped shooting.  
  
Amazingly, tragically, none of them had been aiming at him.  
  
Shinji looked up, not even realizing he'd taken cover face-down in the sands. As soon as the firing stopped, he ran towards Asuka's body, splayed like a discarded doll on the sand. By the time he noticed two men sliding down the cliffside to join them, he was already by her side, holding her hand.  
  
"No! Asuka, fight it! Fight!" He screamed, cursing as he rubbed the tears from his eyes but instead ground grains of sand into them. "Asuka! Asuka!"  
  
She coughed, spitting up blood all over herself, and began to mouth words to him. He shook his head violently, as if to deny that any of this was really happening.   
  
Howard La alternated staring at the two children and the two men approaching him. "What have you done?" he asked, as soon as he could make out the men's features, could make out the khaki uniforms. The first man, with long brown hair parted down the middle, pushed roughly past him as if he were never there. "Hey, asshole! You didn't have to kill her!" he screamed, but blacked out as the second man smashed the butt of his rifle against his head. Lamely, he crumpled to the ground face-down, and didn't stir again.  
  
"No, no, no," Shinji protested as Asuka stopped forming voiceless words, and began to close her eyes. "Asuka, no! Don't leave me! Don't die!"  
  
Suddenly, a hand rested on his shoulder, but Shinji yanked his arm away, as though he was touched with fire. "Get away from me! You killed Asuka!"  
  
"Shinji!" said the familiar voice, and abruptly he stopped thrashing. He looked up into the worried large, brown eyes of Shigeru Aoba. "Shinji, it'll be alright. We're here now. Let us take over."  
  
Exhausted, Shinji stopped struggling, and began to nod.  
  
Suddenly feeling as though he were a detached onlooker, he watched as Shigeru pressed his hands all over wounds, old an new, and staunched the wounds as best he could. Amazingly, Shinji heard, she was only struck four times, though the blood lost seemed to tell a different story.   
  
Emotionally drained, Shinji watched as three men carried her over to the white Hummer vehicle and laid her down in the back, with two of them climbing in with her. He felt rough hands pick him up and practically drag him to the car, where he had to be helped into a seat in the front. He barely noticed the NERV logo painted on the side of the doors, nor did he care that it seemed one of the NERV personnel was grabbing at his bloodied leg, where one of Howard's bullets apparently grazed him. He didn't even seem to care that they were leaving all their supplies and food on the beach, or that Howard La was handcuffed and unconscious somewhere behind him, with a rifle trained on his head.   
  
"Shinji, I can't believe you're alive. The others are going to flip when they see you and Asuka," Shigeru said as the Hummer roared to life, and began moving. Shinji no longer cared where they were going.  
  
"Asuka..?" he asked, hoarsely, at the mention of her name.  
  
"I'm sorry about that. We'll do the best we can," the technician said grimly, and with a slight nod of the head, Shinji fell into a deep, deep sleep. 


	13. Job's Dilemma

Shinji awoke with a violent start, to find himself strapped into the back seat of a large car which rocked violently as it navigated through the darkness. He couldn't see very far past the tinted windows, but he was more concerned about the pain that suddenly washed through his entire body. His arm tingled, his nostrils burned, and his eyes blurred and flashed with lights, but still he could make out the familiar face before him that seemed to scrutinize him.

"Thank goodness," Shigeru Aoba said with relief. Shinji winced as he felt his arm pinched painfully, and looked down to notice Shigeru withdrawing an empty syringe from his forearm.

"Don't worry. It's just some morphine," Shigeru explained as he handed the syringe to a NERV security officer next to him. "It'll wear off in a bit, though you'll probably wish it hadn't, when it does. You almost went into shock back there," he added, and smiled weakly. "Had to make sure you were okay. You've been out for about a half-hour."

Shinji flexed his arm a few times and examined his surroundings. There were about five of them in the car--the Hummer vehicle from earlier, he concluded-- from what he could see. Two in the front, and five in the back of the cabin; Shigeru, flanked by two armed personnel tensely holding their weapons, sitting across from Shinji and another man with a black silk hood over his head and his arms painfully handcuffed behind him in his seat.

"Sensei!" Shinji realized that he was looking at Howard La, the man who found him at the beach. He was about to remove the hood from the older man's head when one of the personnel raised a pistol and aimed it straight at Shinji's frozen face.

The cabin fell quiet, except for the vehicle itself, which jostled and rocked as it went over something. Beside Shinji, the man groaned, still incoherent.

Shigeru's face scrunched up in confusion as he laid a hand on the officer's pistol, lowering it. "Sensei? Shinji, is this man your teacher?" He gave a wary glance at the comatose figure, and flipped open the sleek black laptop before him, and starting typing furiously. "Do you know what his name is?"

Shinji nodded. "Howard La. He teaches--"

"Chemistry," Aoba finished for him, reading from his laptop. He looked up. "Shinji, I know you know him, but for now, it's best to keep some distance. At least till we can get him back to base."

"We're going to headquarters? There are more people still alive?" Suddenly a thought struck Shinji. "Asuka! Where is she? How is she doing? She's okay, right? Aoba, where's Asuka!"

The technician paused once more, his eyes lowered. Beside him, the officers squirmed. "She's in the back, Shinji. The back of the SUV has a makeshift equipment and sickbay. She was shot up pretty bad. I don't know what we can do, but we're trying to get back to NERV as quickly as possible."

"No! That can't be true. She's got to be okay. She will be!" Shinji gripped Misato's cross underneath his shirt, and fought back the tears. He angrily rubbed at his eyes. "How much longer till we get to the base, Shigeru? When can we get her some help?"

"Soon, Shinji-kun. Soon."

The words didn't console him very much, but Shinji knew there was little else to do but wait till they got back to Nerv base. Instead of worrying, he tried to force the issue from his mind by looking outside the windows.

It was dark outside, darker than even before. They were well into the city proper now, he could tell, though it was incredible that so much damage had happened in just the span of a few days. True to his sensei's word, whole sectors of the city were flooded with large pockets of LCL.

Garbage cans had been turned over, and many window storefronts had been smashed and looted. Occassionally the odd body or more was found in the middle of the street, on the sidewalks-- Shinji wondered whether they had been placed there, or if no one had bothered to move them from wherever they happened to lay. Absorbed in the details of the husk of a city before him, he idly pushed aside the curious thought of how bodies remained intact, when so many others had been liquefied instantly.

"What happened here?" Shinji breathed in awe, or in horror, of what he saw.

"The oldest story there is," Shigeru Aoba said, as he snapped the cover to his laptop shut. "Man, killing man. Are you ready? It's time to head back into the headquarters, Ikari-kun."

Shinji took one last look outside and realized they were nearing one of Nerv's many classified bunker entrances, scattered across the now-empty fortified city of Tokyo-03. He hadn't realized that they were so close, but now that they were, fear gripped and clutched at his gut, and refused to let go.

Be strong, Asuka, he thought, just as another face took hold in his mind. He gripped Misato's square cross even harder. Father!

Shinji nodded, understanding what he had to do, and then turned from the window. "Okay," he said, simply.


	14. Dante's Path

The sleek black military SUV pulled up alongside a building that looked as if it had aged a decade, instead of just the few days since Shinji had last seen the city. Even in the darkness, Shinji could see the cracked foundations and the rubble at his feet, as if an earthquake had struck. It looked as if most, if not all, of the city's skyscrapers managed to survive the Third Impact and the SEELE's invasion of Nerv headquarters, even though some no longer stood and most had many of their windows shattered. The shards still crunched underfoot with all the other rubble, and the wind moaned as it whistled through their exposed interiors.

Pristine puddles-- orange LCL fluid, Shinji could make out in the pale moon-- still lay in tranquil pools by the curbside. "Is that what happened to everyone?" he asked.

"Yes," Aoba said behind him, as he watched over the NERV personnel unload an emergency gurney out of the back of the SUV's large rear cargo hold. "Maya's looking into it right now--"

"Maya?" Shinji looked up at the sound of her name, and looked over his shoulder. "Maya's still alive?" he asked, quickly running over to his side. "How is she? Who else made it? Who else!"

"Calm down," one of the personnel said, beside the teenager. "We've got to get--"

"No!" Shinji whirled around and punched him in the face, and he fell instantly onto his face on the street. Shinji's chest hurt as he gulped down deep, desperate breaths of air, but he was too angry to notice. At his sides, his hands opened and closed into fists, then stopped as he finally noticed the man. He was only maybe ten years older than himself, about the same age as Shigeru Aoba, but his standard-issue khaki jumpsuit was soaked through with blood. A gauze compress was wrapped tightly around his shoulder.

"Argh! Stupid kid!" The Nerv technician tried to raise himself up onto his elbow, breathing through his gritted teeth, but instead swayed weakly under his own weight. Another personnel-- older, and heavier-built-- came to his side and helped him up onto his feet.

Shigeru checked on the wounds, and, after spraying a disinfectant aerosol across the bloodied wound, opened a fresh package of gauze roll and began to roll them across the other man's shoulder and chest.

"What.... what happened to him?" Shinji asked, after a moment, his breath caught in his throat.

"Don't talk about me as if I ain't here, kid," the man said, and winced as Shigeru tied off the gauze in a not. Shinji looked at the man again, but he wouldn't meet his gaze-- in fact, he suddenly realized, no one could look him in the eye.

"It's been a very long night," Aoba said, quietly, then laughed. "Night? I meant week. Not even," he corrected himself. "Take care of the teacher," he said to the two Nerv personnel, "and ESPECIALLY take care of the Second Child. The Commander won't be happy if we lose them after finding out they were alive all this time."

Shinji frowned. "Father? He wouldn't care about me," he said, but even he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice. Uncertainty--or hope? And if the latter, what would make him think that anything else was different? He turned his head away, hoping to feign interest in watching the personnel carefully strap down the still-unconscious teacher onto a gurney, while others arranged IV-bags onto a second gurney's hooks. Father's still alive, he thought to himself while watching them.

Shigeru gripped Shinji on both shoulders, and stooped down to speak with him eye-to-eye. "I don't know what you have against your father," he said, then hastily added, "or what your father might have against you. This isn't the time for it.

"The Third Impact has taken place, Shinji-kun. Yes, Maya, Makoto and I are still alive. So is the Commander, but... well, you'll see. There are several dozen others, too, all down in the safety of the headquarters, but you have to realize that this is out of an original couple THOUSAND people working under Nerv. We don't know what happened, but first we have to pick up the pieces. First, we have to rebuild and find out who's made it, and who didn't."

"Then?" Shinji looked at the Nerv technician hopefully.

"Then," Shigeru explained, forcing a smile, "Then, we can start over.

"Now-- are you okay enough to help us? It's still a long walk into headquarters, and we haven't regained power yet-- at least, not enough to run any auxiliary programs or utilities that aren't essential yet."

Shinji nodded. "I think so. I mean... yes. I can do it."

"Good. Now, I want you to help these people take Asuka into the tunnels. Like I said, there won't be any service cars that'll take us into the GeoFront." Aoba Shigeru pointed to the cluster of people hoisting Asuka's bloodied, comatose form onto a gurney. "Help them hold the IV-bags. Steady the way for them-- it's sure to be bumpy on the way down."

Nodding, Shinji went over, but froze as he noticed that the man he hit was among them, and was looking right at him. Setting his jaw firmly, he forced himself forward, and took a corner of the gurney, the one closest to the various tangled hoses and drips that led into Asuka Soryuu Langley's forearm.

"I'm...sorry," he said. He felt them observe him from the corners of their eyes. "I shouldn't have hit you. I'm sorry."

The man-- no, all of them-- watched him for what felt like a long time. Then, suddenly, he nodded and smiled weakly at Shinji. "Glad to have you aboard. We'll take any help we can."

Shinji nodded, and straightened out the IV-drips, and looked at Asuka. Her skin radiated coolness, and her chest barely rose and fell underneath the thick, blood-stained blanket that covered her midsection. Behind them, Shigeru gave the order to go ahead, as another two technicians pried open vault-like metal doors with crowbars. Shinji paid them no mind, but instead, scrutinized Asuka's every labored movement, and the way her golden hair plastered to her brow.

"She'll be okay," the personnel with the arm in a makeshift sling said, as if he were reading his thoughts. "We'll get there as soon as we can. Just be careful," he added as they started to move forward into the service elevators, meant to bring cars and other vehicles to and from the Geofront far below. "We'll need all the help that we can."

Shinji took one last look at Asuka's still form just as they were all consumed by the cave-like darkness.


	15. Dante's Path, part two

Not long after they'd entered one of the many service tunnels that ran from the surface and down into Nerv headquarters, deep within the Geofront, Shinji realized that, even without having to carry both Asuka Soryuu Langley and his former teacher on stretchers, the way down was both difficult and treacherous. Having them both, however, only exacerbated their journey, as did the fact that, without electricity, the darkness of the escalator track tunnels were nearly impenetrable. What scant light there was came from a huge gaping hole right above the Geofront, where, not long ago, massive white Evangelion unit robots had exposed Nerv headquarters on Seele's orders, of all people.

With a grunt of effort, Shinji eased his corner of the gurney's wheels down onto the next escalator platform, wondering how many, exactly, there were left to go. Each one was large enough to hold a depot truck, since these escalators were intended to carry employees' automobiles and other service and utility trucks to and from the silver pyramid so far below. He recalled that it took about 10 minutes to travel from the headquarters to the surface, and vice versa, but that was with a service car running at full speed. His arms were already burning with exhaustion, and his shirt clung to his chest with sweat, but all he could do was carry Asuka down each platform, one by one, and consider himself lucky that Shigeru Aoba had asked him to help carry Asuka and not his teacher.

It took several hours to cross the length of the tunnel, and by the time both teams had reached the bottom, they were both visibly exhausted. Shinji realized that the massive chasm that was the Geofront was considerably better-lit now, and realized that dawn was probably fast approaching. Now looming high above them, the steep slope of the pyramid-like Nerv headquarters seemed to glow in the soft light.

As the Nerv personnel took a moment to rest, Shigeru Aoba withdrew two syringes from the medical kit that hung from his shoulder, and filled them with clear liquid from separate metal-capped glass bottles. "Caffeine and morphine," Aoba explained as he scrutinized the syringe measurements.

Shinji followed the engineer over to Asuka's side, where he smoothly slid one needle into the side of her neck. "Morphine to dull whatever pain she's in," he began, then turned and injected the other into Professor La's forearm. "And the other to wake him up. I didn't want him to find out which route we took to get inside the Geofront, but now that he's down here, he may as well walk for himself. Your father-- I mean, the commander would like to see him and ask him questions, I'm sure."

As the teacher slowly woke up and blink his eyes several times, he groaned and held a hand to his temple, where the butt of a rifle had slammed into his head and left a telltale purple welt.

"Aoba?," Shinji asked, returning to Asuka. "Why DID we take the service escalators down to the headquarters, especially since there are about a dozen other ways to get down here?"

Aoba capped and returned the needles, and slapped the teacher lightly on the cheek several times to stimulate him. "They're all clogged, Shinji-kun. They're either all filled with Bakelite right now, from the counterattack measures we used, or are shut-down without any electricty to open them back up. Others we found completely flooded with LCL-- we made the mistake of opening one of these up, and it gushed everywhere. Poor bastards.

"Hey-- are you awake?" Shigeru slapped the teacher a little more vigorously this time. "Time for you to come with us. We won't have any trouble, will we, sensei?" Shigeru smiled as the teacher stumbled off his gurney, and, still craddling his head in his hands, looked all around the chasm that was Geofront.

"Where...what is this place?" Howard La breathed in awe and confusion. Shinji put an arm around his shoulder, supporting him up, as Shigeru tuned to the rest of the others.

"Home stretch, men," he said, loud enough for all to hear. "Let's get the Children inside and all warmed up." They nodded in unison, understanding what had to be done. As if they'd been trained a thousand times to do it, Shigeru and some of them went to the thick metal gates of Nerv headquarters while others rolled Asuka in her gurney after them, and another pulled the second gurney after them.

Professor La turned to Shinji, his eyes wide with fear and paranoia. "Shinji-kun-- I remember what happened. Are you okay? Is Asuka...?"

"Mm," Shinji nodded. "I know only one of them, but it'll be okay, I guess," he said. "There should be supplies and maybe other people, too, but it doesn't seem like many. I probably can't say where we are, though. It might still be confidential," he offered as an explanation, feeling ridiculous even as he said it. The chemistry professor at least seemed to understand.

"Okay," he said, just as the first group of men grunted with a final shove that opened the steel-plated gates. "I'll trust you and your faith in them, though I think there are too many secrets here. I'll follow you."

Shinji nodded, and together, they followed the rest of the group into Nerv headquarters.

In stark contrast to the chaos and aftermath of the Third Impact outside, Nerv headquarters seemed as still and quiet as ever. Shinji realized that everything was deathly quiet around them, and realized that he could no longer hear the familiar, dull hum coming from the very walls and filtered air vents. Chemical glow-sticks had been left at every corner to light their way, and every so often, one of the Nerv personnel would crack open another to replace one that was dying out.

"Is this... is this what you and Asuka and Rei doing?" Howard asked, after a moment. He stretched out an arm to touch the cool surface of the metal-paneled walls. "What have they gotten you three into?"

"No questions," one of the personnel said, simply, as he swung his rifle back at him. "Hurry it up."

Shinji and his professor looked at each other, but said nothing. Instead, they struggled to keep pace with the others, who seemed to be full of the singular purpose of getting Asuka Soryuu Langley to medical help. He wondered whether it was just him, or if their pace really was quickening to brisk, march-like steps. It was hard to tell in the echoing hallway.

"Shinji, hurry up," Shigeru said, as some of the soldiers ran ahead to wide bay doors, streaked with the black grease of rocket ammunition and riddled with bulletholes. Even with the damage, Shinji recognized it an instant before Shigeru announced, "We're here. Everyone's here. Central Dogma."

"Shigeru? Is that you?" came a familiar voice from beyond the wide doorway. Shinji paused, barely recognizing the woman who stood before them.

Second-lieutenant Maya Ibuki was only 24, but her face was haggard and visibly tired. Her short dark hair was in disarray, and her usual khaki uniform top and white pants were replaced by a one-piece orange jumpsuit, from the engineering department. "Were you able to find anything out there? Or anyone?" she asked, as they drew nearer.

Shinji could hear her gasp as her eyes landed on him, and for a second, she looked like herself again, but for only a second. Her face blanched as the gurney carrying ran past her. "Asuka!" she cried, covering her mouth with her tiny hands.


	16. One Little Lie

-SIX DAYS AFTER THIRD IMPACT

UNKNOWN PLACE

When Asuka Soryuu Langley opened her eyes, she was surprised to find herself completely naked and floating in some kind of void, but the initial surprise soon faded. Instead, she slowly realized that she was expecting it all along, and had known about it for quite some time.

Shinji, she thought. Her lips moved, but the only noise she heard was a dull, comforting throbbing that seemed to come from all around, like a wet, soft whooshing coming from everywhere and nowhere. Shinji, she thought again, and wondered why it was his voice that came to her.

"Now, now, Asuka," someone suddenly said. Asuka turned her head all around but could not find its source. Instead, she looked towards the dull bright light above her that seemed to slowly grow in intensity with each passing moment. "Be a good girl, Asuka. For mommy."

Her eyes went wide, and her arm rose towards the light. "Momma!" she cried voicelessly.

Images rushed in to fill the void. Memories, long ago thought lost. Her mother, her real mother, spooning food into her mouth. Asuka couldn't recall her entire face, just glimpses here and there that seemed to jump from one feature to the next as soon as Asuka sought to memorize or scrutinize them for too long. Her mother's eyes creased at the corners and her lips pulled back into a smile, her deep reddish hair pulled back into a still-youthful ponytail.

"That's right, darling. Eat it all-- isn't it good? Be strong for momma. Grow big and strong." She smiled once more, the visions still blurred and almost frenetic. "You're really a good girl, Asuka, you know that?"

"Mother! I'm trying; I really am!" Asuka clenched her teeth, wanting to hide and cry, but there was no avoiding her memories of her mother, and there were no tears for her to shed.

"You're truly one of the lucky, blessed ones, little Asuka," her mother continued, her smile more subtle now. "So many....simply gone. Men, women... even helpless innocent babies like you. They're blaming the incident on a meteor in Antarctica, but we know better-- I even signed some of the forms that authorized the forging of those photographs. All it took was that one little lie to explain away the death of half the world, and the rest of them thanked their gods that they were spared.

"Including me. And you, too, darling," her mother said. In the void, Asuka saw her mother place the baby food down, away, and rest her head on the table. "And your father," she began to sob quietly, away from her daughter's eyes, "wherever he is now."

"Mama! No!" Asuka's mouth opened and closed, screaming wordlessly. "We go on! We continue! Everyone's okay!"

"One little lie...," her mother said again. Baby fingers opened and closed, outstretched but never reaching, to reassure her.

Asuka clamped her hands over her ears and clenched her eyes shut. Her slow hovering rocked violently, all of a sudden, as though ripples were stirring in the void that held her aloft. "No! My mother's dead! They told me that she went insane after an early synchronization test! They told me that the Evas did this to her! It's too early! She wasn't crazy yet! Did they lie? This isn't--"

Silence.

Asuka froze as she realized that everything had gone black around her, and that she was alone, dressed in her red, snug-fitting plug suit. Her arm was tightly bound with bandages, and the left side of her face was covered with an eye patch and several layers of gauze. She blinked and looked at her gloved good hand, wet with the tiny shimmering beads of her tears.

"Did they lie to me?" she asked herself again, finally hearing her own voice. "Did they cover-up again what happened, just so mother would continue working on the Eva project?

In spite of herself, Asuka smiled and scrubbed the tears away from her face with her forearm. "All this time, I wanted to be the best Eva pilot. For the attention, maybe, but also to beat that which defeated my mother." Asuka looked down at her tear-stained hands once more, and clenched them into fists. "I will beat Eva. I'm not done yet."

Suddenly, she doubled over in pain, her eyes wild and frantic. "What the hell?" Her chest seemed to buck and kick as wild cough after cough tore her chest apart. She fell to her knees, clutching her stomach with one hand as the other covered her mouth. The coughing fit seemed to last for ages, but was over as soon as it came. When Asuka withdrew her hand, she stared at the blood in her palms.

"You deserve it, you know," came a child's voice.

Asuka's head whipped upwards, only to stare at a young girl, perhaps five years old, with bright red hair done up in pigtails on either side of her head. She wore a bright yellow dress, and clutched a stuffed monkey in her arms.

She wiped her hand across her stomach, leaving a bloody trail. "Who are you?" she demanded, though she thought she knew the answer already.

"I'm not you, if that's what you're thinking," the girl said solemnly. She clutched the monkey tighter to her chest. "You deserved it," she continued, pointing at the bloody smear. "You killed your mother, you know."

"What did you say?" Asuka gritted her teeth as she held herself back from strangling the young girl. Asuka remembered only all too well how she ran into her mother's hospital room, only to discover she'd hung herself from the ceiling fan. The memories made her shiver. "Who are you anyway, if you're not me?"

"You'll find out," the small child said, as she disappeared as quickly and as mysteriously as she arrived.

Asuka stared at the spot where the young girl-- herself, she convinced herself, no matter what the child said-- had stood just a moment ago. When she looked away, she sometimes thought she saw a glimmer of the stuffed monkey laying there, its stuffing torn from the side of its head and one of its arms missing, but as soon as she turned her head back, it was gone.

After several minutes, Asuka looked up and all around her, and walked away silently, having decided enough was enough.


	17. To Save a Soul

-SIX DAYS AFTER THIRD IMPACT  
TOKYO-3, JAPAN-

Maya Ibuki was, first and foremost, a woman of the sciences. Even after she graduated at the top of her class in military school, and even after she'd opted to transfer from the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to the United Nations peacekeeping forces, she considered her lieutenant officer's rank as something she merely picked up along the way of her scientific career. To her, the military meant access to nearly-unlimited research funds, and the opportunity to work with the leading scientific minds to have survived the Second Impact.

Still, despite her several years working as a biotechnologist in the United Nations' Project-E, her training as a field medical officer in the military automatically took over as soon as she saw followed the gurney carrying Asuka to a nearby unobstructed corner.

"Dear God," she gasped, instantly reaching for her wrist to check for vital signs. She glanced at three other Nerv personnel, only one of whom was a trained medical officer. It would have to do. "You there, help. I need chemical light sticks posted everywhere to properly see what we're doing. Shigeru, What happened to her?"

"Friendly fire," her colleague and firend said, as he deftly sliced open her clothes with a knife. "Afer seeing a smokefire from the lakeside beach, we encountered the Children with their school professor," he continued, pointing a brief glance at Professor La, being held at both elbows by two personnel.

He said, "It was probably a case of mistaken identity and paranoia. I didn't see what happened, or who shot first, but Asuka was caught in the middle of it. Oh, and take him away," he told the two officers without bothering to glance at them.

"How long's she been like this?" Maya poured some alcohol into a shiny metal bowl and dipped her hands into it, then opened an emergency medical cabinet that hung on a nearby wall. Taking a cursory glance at what was available, she grimaced slightly as she donned a face mask.

Shigeru glanced briefly at his watch. "Almost seven hours. We unfortunately took the long way down here, because--"

"...Of the LCL," Maya finished for him. She pointed down to her still-damp pants legs. "We saw that for ourselves, when we tried to find other passages out of the GeoFront." She turned to another Nerv personnel beside her. "Keep pressure on that arm. The wound's close to a major artery. I don't want to lose her, now that she's made it this far."

Maya's hands were a blur, as if she were back working on a keyboard once again. Though usually squeamish at the sight of blood, Maya had seen enough bloodshed from the attempted coup'detat from Marduke's forces to last her a lifetime. No, she corrected in her head; they'd succeeded all right, and left a grisly body count to prove it.

Her forehead creased as she forced herself to pay attention. Asuka was the important thing, now.... Without her noticing, the medical officer in her took over, as if she'd been doing it all her life.

"Inject her with morphine. She might come out of her coma, and immediately enter shock. It's strong stuff, but she'll thank us later...

"Sterilize that hole-- it's only a flesh wound, but it looks like grains of sand are still embedded. Use what's left of the peroxide, and go grab several bottles more. Hurry....

"Somebody get some chemical heat packs... alot of them! Her body's ice-cold! You there, keep rubbing your hands on her till we can get the packs here. The friction'll create some heat, and we need all that we can find...

"Shigeru, find something to keep her legs elevated two degrees, to raise the extrimities above her heart. You there, apply direct pressure with your fingertips to exert wider pressure. Also, find some pure granulated sugar. Then pour it in the worst of the wounds in the extremities..."

Shigeru paused as he handed Maya a towel. "Are you sure?"

She wiped her brow feverishly. "We don't have the best of resources right now, and the sugar will decrease bleeding, promote clotting, and discourage bacteria." Beside her, the medical officer nodded his chin towards Shigeru.

He nodded, and after a moment, joked, "Good thing she's not a diabetic."

Maya let out a laugh-- the first in what felt like many, many weeks. She glanced at him, and smiled as she continued working. "Thanks for the help."

"Thank me when our job's done," he said, simply, with a brief smile.

Shinji stepped forward, horrified by the sight of Asuka's body. Her exposed adolescent breasts were pale and cold, where they were not ripped by jagged bullet wounds or covered with drying, sticky blood. "Will she be alright?" he said, weakly.

Maya looked at him gravely as if she just realized he was there all along. "You have to leave, Shinji-kun. This is no place for you. We're going to operate very quickly now, and we've got to concentrate. Kids shouldn't have to see this sort of thing."

"But--," he began to protest, but Maya was already engrossed in the makeshift operating area. Shigeru smiled reassuringly at him behind his mask, then turned back to assist her.

"Don't worry, Shinji-kun," someone said, clamping a hand down on his shoulder and turning him away. Shinji looked up at the technician, and felt a brief wave of relief to see that it was Makoto Hyuuga, another Nerv operator. "It's good to see you again, Shinji-kun. Come; we've got to let them work."

Shinji Ikari followed him, but only after giving one last look over his shoulder.


	18. Reunions

Shinji shivered in the darkness of Nerv headquarters' empty corridors. The day was just beginning outside, he knew, but within the GeoFront and without power, the place only seemed like a tomb. Still, he had to admit, the damage from the battle that took place was less than he'd thought.

Debris still littered some of the hallways, while some corridors and rooms were completely sealed off by walls of rough, hardened plastic the color of red mud; Shinji idly wondered whether or not they'd ever get the Bakelite chipped away. Nerv used it in the invasion to block off corridors and to halt any attempts by Marduke to remove Evangelion unit-01, but now the hardened rivers of Bakelite just added a claustrophobic feel to the place. He was at least thankful that they'd removed the corpses of those that were killed pre-Impact-- probably to reduce the risk of diseases that'd break out, Shinji figured-- even though telltale blood streaks had dried into the once-shiny floors.

"You know where we're going, don't you?" Makoto asked suddenly. His voice startled Shinji, but soon faded amidst the echoes of their footsteps.

Shinji looked around them and realized that, despite the seemingly labyrinthine path, he recognized where they were, and where they were going-- upwards. "We're heading to the announcement room, aren't we? To the bridge, I mean."

The Nerv technician nodded, smiling, and stopped before a metal doorway riddled with bullet holes and propped open by a rock. "Good, Shinji-- it took us a bit longer to reorient ourselves in the darkness. And actually, we're already here. After you," he offered with a wave of his hand.

Even with his mind preoccupied with thoughts of Asuka, Shinji entered the room with a look of wonder on his face; he'd never been allowed up here before. They were about four stories high in a huge, cavernous room with high vaulted ceilings and metal-paneled walls. Wide, tilted consoles, normally abuzz and glowing with thousands of applications all running at the same time, sat silent and dormant in a semicircle formation that looked over the holographic field display suspended before them in the air. All around even here, bullet shell casings and holes were abundant. On another platform much higher and behind him was another perch-- the commander's post. Where Commanders Fuyutski and his father oversaw missions.

"This is where we were, when the... Third Impact happened," Makoto said, rolling out his chair and sitting on it. He pointed under his desk with an embarrassed smile. "I was right over here. And Aoba was there, and Maya was there," he added, pointing at each of the consoles.

Shinji looked at him sideways. "And the others?"

Makoto clasped his hands and frowned slightly. "When we woke up, we were covered in LCL and completely naked, our uniforms underneath us or nearby. Shigeru was the last to be knocked unconscious, and he claimed he saw things. Well, we all did, actually, but that's not important. It was probably hysteria that drove us to it. That, or the stress.

"But we all agreed that we saw each other spontaneously transform into liquid state," he continued. "Into LCL, in fact.

"Commander Fuyutski had come down here--with us-- in the final moments. We salvaged as much of him as we could in a bucket, till we figure out what to do," he said, dropping his head in his lap.

Makoto continued, "Misato was found, dead, at one of the cage elevators. Her clothes were beside her body, which means that she'd transmogrified into LCL along with everyone else, but we couldn't explain why she was dead, except for a single bullet found among her clothes."

Something nagged at Shinji's brain. Wouldn't that mean she was still alive until the Third Impact? He wanted to ask, but didn't dare. He didn't want to explain how she sacrificed her life for his during the attack, how she got shot trying to get him back into Eva unit-01. "I'm such a coward," he said to himself, touching the silver cross she'd given him, underneath his shirt.

Makoto looked up at Shinji again, and this time his face was contorted with confusion and madness. "We discovered and blasted open the Terminal Dogma, and found Professor Akagi's clothes floating in that pool.... We got the measurements and readouts when that... white thing... rose from the Terminal Dogma, but we couldn't understand it. What on earth did they have down there?"

Shinji frowned. He saw everything down there, when he followed Misato and her boyfriend, Kaji-- or were they something else?-- down into the bowels of Nerv headquarters, where only a handful of people ever tread before. Even now, he could barely grasp what he saw, let alone comprehend it. "What about my father?" he asked, hoping to change the subject.

Aoba bit his lip, hesitating to say anything. "Your father-- I mean, the Commander-- was found running in the hallways just two days ago, Shinji. I'm afraid he's gone quite mad."

"What?"

The older man stood and walked over to Shinji, holding him by the shoulders. "This is hard to say, but you must understand. The Commander's been touched by madness, Shinji-kun. He's been shouting and calling for your mother ever since we found him, and wouldn't stop, so we locked him in his office. As for his condition, well.... We have no idea what happened to him."


	19. The Twelve

"My father? Insane?" Shinji Ikari paused and looked at Makoto Hyuga sideways. Makoto, however, refused to look him in the eyes, and instead only deepened the frown on his face a fraction more. But Shinji noticed it. 

"I... I think I need to sit down," Shinji siad, and took one of the large, swiveling chairs reserved for Makoto, Shigeru and Maya. After a pause, he asked, "Why did you lock him in his office?" 

"Frankly, Shinji, we're all a little scared, and not just of him. The headquarters is a massive construct. You know that the black pyramid structure we're in is just the tip of the iceberg. We're still discovering subterranean passages every day in our search for survivors. And with the state your father's in right now, we don't want to lose him. Or...," he began, but quickly stopped himself. 

Shinji nodded, understanding immediately. Or what if he snapped and hurt somebody? He was accutely aware that he was terrified of his own father- he felt a sudden pang of shame and regret at the thought- but who knew what he might do, or where he may run off to, and in the dark? That was an even more terrifying thought. 

A metallic knock interrupted his thoughts, followed shortly by a voice, asking, "Excuse me, sirs?" 

Shinji and Makoto looked up at the same time towards the bullet hole-ridden doorway. Normally only operators and technicians of the highest security clearance could have made it this far, but without electricity, the personnel that survived the Third Impact had to pry doors open and jamb them with large cement debris, or blast them apart altogether. 

In the doorway stood another Nerv operator, judging by her khaki jumpsuit and white pants., even though many parts were stained by grime and scuff marks. Her short black hair fell about midway on the neck, and framed a pale, slim face that seemed marred only by a tiny mole underneath one corner of her mouth. She gave the impression that she was prim and proper, despite her dissheveled looks, though not so much as Maya's, whom she looked to be the same age as. 

"May I enter, sirs?" she asked, in a serious, deadpan voice. 

"Of course," Makoto said, standing from his seat. "No need for decorum of rank, Aoi-san. Especially not after what happened. We have the same posiiton, after all." 

"But not the same ranks," she added, with a small smile that seemed to clash with her reserved-looking spectacles. 

Makoto grinned, and scrubbed a hand through his brown hair. "Again, not necessary at this moment. Shinji-kun, come; let me introduce you. This is sub-lieutenant Aoi Saijyou, one of the Evangelion operators. Aoi-san, this is Shinji Ikari-kun, the Third Child, pilot of-" 

"Evangelion unit-01," she said for him. "Born June 6th, only son of Commander Ikari and Yui Ikari, deceased. Bloodtype A-positive. Piloted Eva-01 with no prior training, and at a 40 synch ratio. Impressive," she commented, shaking Shinji's hand. She turned to the other operator. "It is our jobs to know this, you know, lieutenant, sir." 

"Of course, of course," he replied, dismissing the matter with a wave of his hand. 

"Wow," Shinji remarked. "That was great! But... I didn't know that there were other Nerv operators," he admitted. 

Aoi's smile disappeared, replaced by a tone that sounded like she was playing back a litany of memorized data. "There are a total of 12 operators," she began. "Lieutenants Makoto Hyuga, Shigeru Aoba, and Maya Ibuki you already know, but they're just the main coordinators within the chain of command. Serving under and in conjunction with them are nine more, or three assigned to each of them: one each for data prioritization and analysis-" 

"We call them 'Sifters,'" Makoto interjected. 

"...one each for protocol and sub-routine management-" 

"'Runners.'" 

"...And the last three are dedicated to other specific aspects associated with field operations," she continued, unhampered by the other operator's interruptions. "Utility management; including but not limited to weapons, plug cords and crew coordination. Environment logistics; including but not limited to field reports, and supervision over Tokyo-3 and all surrounding areas. And lastly, a coordinator for United Nations tactical assistance and operations." 

"We call them 'channelers,'" Makoto said. "Aoi here is the Nerv operator for utilities, which means she's currently commandeered half the remaining personnel to get our electricity back." 

"Among other duties, yes," she said, rolling her eyes. "Which brings me to why I'm here, sir. I just wanted to report in and let you know that we should have the electrical generators online soon. Thermoelectrical generators are out of commission, but the microbial and hydroelectric generators seem to be running fine. We should have them up within the hour." 


	20. Steps

For a long time after Aoi Saijyou had left with Makoto to check on the technicians' progress in restoring power, Shinji sat in the darkness of the Nerv operators' station. His legs were pulled up against his chest, his feet anchored at the edge of the console chair, as he stared up at the metal-paneled ceiling far, far above his head. Father's there, he thought to himself. 

Insane. Driven mad. No father anymore- but I'm used to that- and no mother, either. Am I all alone? 

Asuka, he remembered. The computer workstations obstructed his view, but he knew that if he stood and looked over the side, he'd be able to observe Maya, Shigeru and a handful of other technicians working on her body. 

Asuka's gone too, he thought to himself. Right? 

Beyond the console computers, he could hear their soft voices, carried up in the vastness of the Terminal Dogma. Makoto brought me up here so that I could watch them and make sure Asuka's all right, but what's the point? Mother, father, Ayanami- Asuka will be gone, too, I know. It's a matter of time. Why does everyone have to leave me? Why can't we all just be together? 

Shinji clenched his eyes shut, squeezing out tiny tears that ebbed at the corners and left tiny wet tracks down his cheeks. 

So alone. Always alone. But why? 

"This is amazing work, Aoi," Makoto said. He ran his hand through hundreds of colorful bundles of wires while his other hand held up a chemical glow stick near his face. His eyes jumped frenetically as he quickly followed each strand to check where each one was routed to and from within the giant power router and transformer. "I can't believe you'd accomplished all this in just a few days." 

"You can thank my crews for this, lieutenant," she grinned. "They did all the hard work in restoring this station. And in the dark, too," she added, giving a thumbs-up to the two-dozen personnel behind her who waited with bated breath. Some of them let out a small cheer, while others shook hands with each other, but they all shared relieved well-earned looks of accomplishment. 

Most of them were completely unqualified for the work she gave them, but none of them had disagreed with her expertise. Or her leadership, for which she was grateful. She'd culled them from the small pool of survivors of the Third Impact, all based on their abilities and duties within Nerv. Luckily, many were electrical or mechanical engineers of some sort, but she'd also found a small number of scientists from the Research and Development crews of Project-E. 

Aoi put her hands back into her white lab coat. It was chilly in the dark, but luckily they'd be able to change that within a few minutes. "We're lucky that the solar panels themselves hadn't been destroyed. We had to sacrifice a couple of the solar generator fields, but what we have will definitely get us by," she said. 

"What sort of system do we have rigged?" Makoto asked. 

An orange-suited technician handed her a thick sheaf of electrical schematic printouts, which she flipped through quickly but almost casually so. She had been working day and night with the hardware for the last 72 hours, after all. "The original 45-megawatt system consists of 300 BP-2150 150 watt PV modules and 15 'Sunny Boy' 2500 watt inverters," she answered. "The second 12-megawatt system consists of 72 Schott Applied Power 165 watt PV modules, and four more 2500 Sunny Boy inverters. 

"System parameters are monitored by this Sunny Boy control module and PC connection, located within megacomputer Balthasar," she continued. "The pumping system consists of 16 Kyocera KC-120 PV modules, each mounted on a dual axis Wattsun tracker, powered by a Grundfos SunSub PV powered submersible well pump." 

Makoto scrunched his face in confusion, and looked at the sub-lieutenant behind him. "It's not really my area of expertise, but isn't that a little outdated?" 

She shrugged. "They're American AND a little antiquated, sure, but this installation was built a long time ago. This solar generator was never really meant to be used in the first place, except in the most severe of cases." 

"You've got a point," Makoto said, standing from his crouched position. "Okay, close it up. We're ready to go." A technician took his place and screwed the panel back into place. 

"Want to check out the fields, too?" 

"Nah. I trust you. We've already seen the substations and transmission lines. We don't need to check every inch of circuitry or of the distribution lines. And besides, you wouldn't have shown it to me if you hadn't already made the calculations and test-checks yourself, would you?" 

"Triple-checks, actually," Aoi Saijyou confirmed with a satisfied smile. 

"Well, then, all that's left is to flip the proverbial switch," Makoto said, grinning. "It'll be a nice change of pace from this overbearing darkness all the time. Frankly, this place gives me the chills. 

"You want to do the honors?" he asked. 

Aoi Saijyou turned to her crews, and nodded. "Absolutely." 


	21. Steps, part two

****

My apologies for the name change in here for the "new" character Aoi Nanase—from this point on, Aoi Saijyou. She, and her two Nerv operator friends who'll appear soon in the story, are taken from one of the Japan-only Evangelion Games, "The Shinji Raising Project." Not having the ability to read Japanese, I tried researching Aoi's last name, and came up with Nanase, but one of my bosses—and editor at Anime Insider magazine, pointed out that it was really Saijyou. So, from now on, she's Aoi Saijyou! I'll try to change her name in the last couple of posts, but since I'm really lazy and probably won't get to it for a while, I'll add this disclaimer here. -Miguel

"Are we ready for this?"

Aoi Saijyou stared out into the growing mass of people assembling before her. News of electricity starting up had spread like wildfire, and it seemed as if everyone had wanted to be present for the moment. Multitudes of chemical sticks dotted the throng and filled the room with their soft luminescent green glow. Even in the massive hall of the Terminal Dogma control center, the air was thick with the stench and heavy breath of nearly all of the Nerv survivors, wounded and able-bodied alike. No one, however, was mentioning the fact that the number of Nerv's personnel was exponentially larger, prior to the Third Impact. No one mentioned the dead, or missing.

"Can we really do this," she asked no one in particular, though she gave a quick glance to Makoto. Even so high above them, the throng and their din were intimidating. Just a half hour ago, Aoi's faith in her abilities as a technician and a scientist was unshakable, but with so many surivivors before her, she realized that mankind's fate hinged upon this moment, upon her and her team's efforts.

The higher-ranked technician beside her smiled and nodded, then glanced at Shinji, whose thoughts were obviously elsewhere. On Asuka and her operation, Makoto guessed.

"We must. There's no other way to survive in this world. Do you want to give the signal?"

Aoi nodded, and raised her hand in the air for attention. The room quickly fell into a hush at her signal. Technicians, already at work, stopped and fell into small teams clustered around the exposed circuitry and hardware of the three supercomputers before the operators' stations.

Although designed and built over a decade ago by the first leader of the science department of Project-E, the supercomputers--called the Magi--ran trillions of calculations per second, dedicated to tactical scenarios against Angel attacks and running the day-to-day operations of not only Nerv's headquarters, but all of Japan as well. Seeing them at rest made Aoi feel nervous. Vulnerable, almost.

"We've got a job," she began. Her voice wavered, but as she stared at the hope in all of their eyes, her resolve quickened. "We don't know what's going on yet, not really, in the outside world. But we're scientists and engineers, almost all of us, and we've still got a job to do. Let's restore power to the headquarters, first, and then we'll take things from there."

A deafening roar errupted from the assembly, as chem sticks flashed and rattled in the darkness as fists pumped into the air. Aoi opened her mouth to speak, but Makoto placed a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. Let them have this moment, he seemed to say. She turned back to the crowd, waited for them to quiet themselves.

"The Third Impact-- which is what Sub-Commander Fuyutski was calling it, while it was happening-- shut down everything," she began again, "including the generators. Which we now have online. All we have to do now is turn the circuit breakers back on, reboot MAGI who'll then start up the rest of the system on its own, and we should be back in business."

Another explosion of cheers arose as the various teams dispersed to the three MAGI compounds, and Aoi stepped back to allow them to do their duties. Each easily the size of a small room, the MAGI terminals of Balthasar, Gaspar and Melchior were mazes of encased wires, coolant pipes and circuit boards protected under de-ionized plating. It had taken a full two hours to raise them from the ground manually, and now that they were this close, it felt like everyone collectively held their breath in anticipation.

"Pumping the primers!" called one of the technicians. Shinji watched as two of them struggled to raise and lower large, flat and gray handles on each of the MAGI compounds. A loud click was heard for each of them as the technicians called out again, "Primers charged!"

"Closing contacts!" came another round of announcements, as buttons were pressed. Instantly, red lights switched on deep within the three computers, and large whirring noises began to fill the room; slowly, at first, and then the noise rose to a constant and steady thumping heard within the Terminal Dogma.

"Initiating O/S start-up!

"Protocols accepted!

"Generators being brought online!"

Aoi watched with bright, wide eyes as MAGI came back to life slowly before her. Since it was first brought online, no one had ever shut MAGI down; not completely, anyway. All diagnostic checks were routinely run, true, but usually it was MAGI itself that monitored MAGI.

Lights suddenly turned on in the Terminal Dogma, blinding nearly all of the NERV personnel who'd stayed underground for the better part of the last week since the Third Impact. Another large cheer arose as scientists and engineers hugged each other, but still the technician crews continued their work, observing the MAGI supercomputers. Above them, holographic grids came on-line.

"Searching sub protocols," another engineer shouted.

"Restoring oxygen and water filtrations and circulation. Searching protocols 2505 through 9107. Wait....," said another technician.

"Auto-running subroutine 108! Something's not right here..."

"Disengaging 'Black Egg' locks 44 through 665! What is this..!"

"'Beginning Gaf's Room purge'!... where are these readings coming from?!"

Makoto and Aoi looked at each other, then turned to man the NERV operator stations immediately. Something was not right. Shinji stared up at the holographic screens above, as they went on-line and displayed the NERV logo of the figleaf and semicircle, and then fade to black.

"Father, what did you do now?" Shinji exhaled breathlessly.

And then the words began appearing in the air.


	22. The Black Egg Protocols

P P

The assembled NERV personnel looked up nervously into the air. The lights remained on and steady, and the circulation ducts started hissing with filtered air once again, but something wasn't right. No one had ever had to reboot the MAGI supercomputers before, so no one could predict what would happen, but as each second passed and the three megaprocessing units slowly revved up to speed, it was apparent that subroutines no engineer had ever heard of were starting to run themselves.

" 'Gaf's room purge complete,'" one engineer shouted over the growing unsettled murmurs and whispers. "'Black Egg Room Completely Open'! Lieutenant Hyuuga, what is all this?"

"A minute! Give me a minute!" Makoto scanned the screens on his workstations furiously, his fingers a rapid blur on the keyboards.

Adjacent to him in another seat, Aoi Sajiyou searched through over several hundred million lines of coding. "I'm going to dive into protocols 2505 through 9107; that's where this whole mess started... no! Access denied! What the hell is this 'Black Egg' protocol?"

Two more women burst into the operators' bridge, both clad in khaki jumpsuits. Shinji Ikari stared at them as they wheezed, fighting to catch their breath.

"Sub-lieutenant operators Kaede Ichigo and Satsuki Oi, reporting for duty!" the younger-looking girl with short brown hair gasped. "How may we be of service, sirs?"

"I'm not the commanding officer!" Makoto said without even looking up. Lines of text glowed as they scrolled across his glasses lenses. "Shit! Another rejection! Is this from Ritsuko's work? Or her mother's? Or, ....," he trailed off with a quick look at Shinji Ikari.

"Are you guys equipped for this work?" Makoto spared a second to regard the pair. He recognized the brunette; she was often seen with Maya whenever she wasn't with him and Aoba, or with Ritsuko. He'd never met the blonde, though. In his head, he started appraising her abilities.

"They're both operators, like me. I'm the head operator for Melchior; they work on Balthasar and Caspar," Aoi said quickly, then turned to face the two girls while still typing. "Grab a station! Quick! Whatever is going on, we have to head it off," she said.

Makoto pointed to the blonde, and then gestured to his own seat. "You! Take over for me. I'm going to the Commander's console and see if I can access something from there." Satsuki nodded and plopped into her seat as quickly as Makoto left it.

Shinji pointed upwards, towards the darkened holographic screens. "Something's happening," he said.

As one, the four operators' heads lifted at the same time their jaws dropped. A blinking red cursor paced across the sky, leaving a trail of harsh-glowing red words:

THROUGH THE RITUAL OF THE HOLY ASSUMPTION, HE BUILT A WORLD. IT EXISTS IN A SPACE SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD OF OUR LORD. MORE ACCURATELY, IT IS WITHIN, YET WITHOUT, THE LORD'S WORLD. UNLIKE THE WORLD OF OUR LORD, IT IS A WORLD IN EXTREME FLUX. ANYONE SWALLOWED UP BY THAT WORLD WILL LIVE THERE FOR ETERNITY, UNDYING. THEY WILL HAUNT THAT REALM AS A SPIRIT. HOW CAN OUR LORD FORGIVE SUCH AN ABOMINATION...?

Shinji clutched at Misato's silver cross around his neck, terrified.

"I...I don't get it," Makoto stammered. "Is it scripture? What the hell is this nonsense? Has anyone gotten a fix on the source of the subprotocols yet?"

"I've got the screens coming up soon," Kaede said, scanning her workstation monitors. "Give me another minute, two max!"

Aoi swallowed hard, and said, "It's not finished yet." The cursor typed out one more line, and then stopped but continued blinking in place:

_ THE CREATION AND RESURRECTION OF ALL OF YOU IS THE SAME AS THAT OF ONE PERSON._

EVERYONE WILL TASTE DEATH, THEN TO US YOU WILL BE ULTIMATELY RETURNED.

Voices erupted from the survivors. "Revelations? It IS the end of the world!" Shinji heard. Others screamed, while few pleaded futilely for order, but nearly all tried to push their way out of the Terminal Dogma. Slowly, Shinji stepped backwards until he hit a wall, and slowly slid down and huddled into himself tightly.

Kaede whipped her head around to Makoto. "Monitors online in three... two... one! Satellite feeds are working!"

Suddenly, the words blinked out and were immediately replaced by over a hundred video panels, floating in mid-air. Several of them were completely black, whereas a dozen more only showed static. Others more depicted scenes of ruin and destruction around the world: nuclear meltdowns had wiped out many major cities; typhon-driven waves crashed against already-battered shorelines; bodies and large lakes of orange LCL dotted many of the satellite feeds. Nothing moved, except for that which was buffetted by hurricane-class winds.

"Is that the rest of the world?" Shinji asked. "Do you think we'll ever find more like us? Survivors?"

No one answered him, although everyone in the room was already wondering the same thing.

"My god." Dropping his hands to his sides, Makoto Hyuga's brow furrowed as he stared at one particular screen. "Kaede-san, would you please mind switching to the enlarged view of screen 59? And Aoi, run a spectral analysis of that area, please."

"Running spectral analysis," the blonde confirmed.

The screen blinked once more, wiping away the other screens to reveal one massive screen. Despite the early morning light, the sky was the color of a deep purple-green welt, and winds whipped debris and soil away past the camera. Deep in the background, massive vague shadows stalked and stumbled like a pack of beasts on the horizon, purposeful yet inscrutable. .

"Where is that shooting from? What location?" Aoi demanded. "Those can't be--" Her sentence was interrupted by a high-pitch beep from deep within Melchior's hardware shell. "Analysis?"

Nerv operator Kaede Ichigo swallowed hard as all the blood drained from her face. "It's shooting from the South China Sea, along Tottori Prefecture. Japan's western coast," she replied. "And Caspar confirms it as pattern blue."

"Balthasar confirms, pattern blue," Satsuki seconded.

Makoto and Shinji looked expectantly at Aoi's blood-drained face, but they already knew the answer. "Pattern blue, confirmed by Melchior," she said. "Multiple Angel sightings, confirmed."


	23. Steps, part three

"Thank God for the light!" 

Maya Ibuki blinked twice, hard, as the electricity flickered on throughout the GeoFront, as did most of the other doctors and Nerv personnel that gathered to help operate on Asuka Soryuu Langley. The electrical hum of generators and systems starting up again could literally be heard through the walls, and though it was a pronounced difference from the darkness and silence they lived in for the last week after the Third Impact, she welcomed it. 

"Remind me to kiss Makoto when I see him," she said, taking a moment to wipe perspiration from her eyes with the back of her scrubs. 

Beside her, Shigeru said, "Me, too." That earned a small round of chuckles and grins behind facemasks from the assembled group. "I wonder what all the commotion is, though," he added as he peered over his shoulder. Maya nodded; they had commandeered a side room from the Terminal Dogma in which to operate on the bullet-ridden adolescent girl, but even through the thick metal-panelled walls, and a long stretch of corridors between them, the muffled murmurs of the voices from the main hall were pronounced. 

"I'm sure it's nothing," Maya said. "They're probably just congratulating themselves and what not. At least things should return to normal fairly soon after this." 

"Normal?" Shigeru laughed. "It'll be a long time before things recover back to a 'normal' state," he said, making quote-marks in the air. "I seem to recall it took us a decade, and then some, to finally achieve what we'd call 'normalcy' pre-Second Impact." 

Maya stared at him hard, in the eyes, since most of the doctors wouldn't dare meet his gaze. How dare he, she thought, especially when we've ALL lost someone. Can we truly call ourselves the lucky ones, she thought angrily. After a long moment, she turned her eyes back to the work before her. 

Shigeru placed a scalpel in her waiting, open hand. "I'm sorry, everyone," he said, after a moment. He felt the heat rising in his own cheeks, felt his shame. 

"Forget it. Let's focus back on saving the Second Child's life. Only two more to go," she said. Maya made a small but deep incision into Asuka's forearm, and then, with forceps, pulled out a small metal slug, slightly crushed at one end as it was driven into her flesh. She stared at it for a moment, and then placed it into a metal pan alongside its brothers. She began to quote her old medical textbooks. 

"'Proper management of bullet wounds requires a working knowledge of physical factors involved in the creation of such injuries, and the way in which they interact,'" she said. "Spray that down, please." A technician leaned in and, using a small squeeze bottle with a directional straw, washed away blood that had pooled in the cavity. 

"Thank you," she said, returning to her work. "'The creation of a ballistic missle wound is a very complex phenomenon that results from the action of the missle and the reaction of the tissue. Thus, the surgeon must know the wound-creating capabilities of the firearms and ammunition available and in general use in his area. He must also be aware of the energy potential of each cartridge and the types, composition, construction, and ballistic properties of the projectiles loaded into these cartridges.'" 

Maya paused and held up another bullet slug. "This one, for instance, comes from a .45-automatic handgun. Its original weight is 230 grams, and has a range of 305 to 370 pounds of force per pound, depending on distance between the muzzle and the target." She looked at it with disdain, and placed it along with the others. It fell to the metal pan with a loud clink. 

"We're finished. Thank goodness," she breathed, dipping her gloved hands into a metallic bowl filled with a clear aseptic solution. She moved to untie her facemask behind her head. 

"You did great, Maya." Shigeru nodded to everyone gathered around the makeshift operating table. "She's by no means in the clear, but we've at least given her a fighting chance." 

"That should be it, Dr. Ibuki," said one of the personnel. A woman in the technical division, judging by the white jumpsuit she wore underneath her gowns. But then again, it was so hard to tell who was in what division anymore; survivors usually grabbed whatever was available to clothe themselves after they discovered themselves inexplicably naked after the Third Impact. 

"Excellent work, ma'am," the woman said again, taking her place at the table. "We'll take care of things from here, and close her up." 

Maya nodded and removed her gloves, placing them in a plastic bag they found, to gather bio-waste to be disposed of properly later. "As soon as you're done, bring her to the medical department one floor up from here. That's the closest one, and even if the life-support resuscitator machines are still off-line, at least we can treat her better than we could here." 

"Yes, ma'am," the woman said, then turned to take over Asuka's operation. Maya looked upon Asuka's too-pale face, and turned away. 

Shigeru stared at the six collected bullet shells on the tray, as washed off his own gloves and removed his surgical gown. 

"That was amazing, Maya," he said as he jogged a little to catch up to her. "I thought you didn't know anything about guns." 

"I told you before; I've done all the same shooting and training you had at the academy. And I'm a doctor in bio-computational sciences, but I'm also medically-trained. I just don't like shooting at people." Maya looked straight ahead as she walked briskly down the hallway that would take them to the Terminal Dogma. "That reminds me. Is the team you took to the surface- the ones that shot Asuka," she said, not noticing Shigeru's slight wince, "Where are they now?" 

Shigeru Aoba thought for a moment. "Possibly with the professor we found with the Children," he replied. He stared down the hallway at the approaching figure running towards them. 

"Remind me to visit them- the team and the professor. Even in this…chaos, we should still hold them accountable. If we've lost that, we may as well admit we've lost civilization," Maya said sternly. "But later. 

"The operation seems to be a success," Maya called to the technician running towards them. She read the concern and urgency in his face. "What seems to be the matter?" 

The technician stopped and doubled over, coughing as he fought to catch his breath. "It's the Angels!" he said. As one, Maya and Shigeru's brows furrowed as they immediately took off, dashing down the hall towards Terminal Dogma at a full run. 

"Lieutenant Hyuuga needs you on the bridge, stat!" he called after them, still wheezing, but they were already long gone. 


	24. The Matter of Persistence

UNKNOWN PLACE,

UNKNOWN TIME 

Asuka Soryuu Langley usually loved heights. She was always the best at rope-climbing in classes, and naturally preferred the vantage point of being higher up than everyone else. You could see much more from above than your normal perspective, she thought. Being higher up was equal to being simply better. 

She had a problem now, though. 

After stumbling in the...the void... for what seemed like days, she'd come across a cliff that almost could be described as sheer-faced. Nearly straight-up and with few perceptible handholds, she still decided to climb it, if only because she thought she might be able to see a way out of whatever place she was currently in. After all, she'd climbed many mountains before; in Austria and the other places her guardians took her to around the world. 

But, wherever she was, she was a long way off from any of these other places. 

"I think I'm stuck," she said to herself. She looked down at her feet, still clad in her red plug suit, dangling. Although she could still see around her as clearly as though it was midday, the foot of the cliff lay in a distant haze. "Crap." 

She swung from a single handhold on an outcropping, and, from her perspective, could see no way to advance, or retreat, or even go around sideways. Asuka squinted as tiny pebbles came loose from her grip; sooner or later the rock would give way, she knew. 

"This is not good," she chided herself, searching frantically across the too-smooth rock face. 

"No, it's not," said an unfamiliar but recognizable voice. Asuka whipped her head around, and found herself staring at the same five-year-old girl she'd met before. She was dressed in the same yellow sundress, with pigtails in her hair and her stuffed monkey clutched tightly to her chest. "It's not good, but you could make it a lot worse. Or better, if you so chose." 

She stood, simply, on the underside of the outcropping by Asuka's hand, unconcerned by the older girl's predicament or even by gravity itself. 

"Is that a threat?" Asuka filled her voice with forced haughtiness, trying to ignore her increasingly sweaty palms. "I remember you. You're that girl, from before." Asuka stared at the child with a frown. "I'd been thinking about you, actually, in these last couple of hours- days- whatever. You remind me someone." 

"Of you?" 

"No," she said slowly. "You said you weren't me, though I'm not convinced of that; not completely, anyway. Maybe you remind me of Shinji-kun. But definitely of Ayanami. You remind me more of her." 

"Is that a terrible thing?" 

"No, not really. But it is annoying. And it's especially inconvenient, considering the fact that you're in my body." Asuka ground her teeth as she tried to switch hands from her precipice, but failed. She exhaled, exasperated and tired. 

The younger girl tilted her head. "But I'm not in your body." 

"Right, right." Asuka nodded, as though the girl was spouting nonsense. "You're not me. We'd established that earlier. But you look like me." 

"That's not what I meant," the child said, and remained silent. 

Asuka quirked an eyebrow as she weighed the little girl in her eyes. "Reaaaaaally inconvenient," she said again, rolling her eyes. 

"To receive help, you should first help yourself." The girl took a few steps, crouched upside-down by Asuka's hand. "Do you know where we are yet? Do you realize the things you-we-are capable of, here? 

"I'm surprised you hadn't figured it out yet," the girl spoke again, after Asuka stared at her in silence for a moment. 

"Do you mean to say I'm dead?" 

The younger girl shook her head. "Not dead, yet, not alive. We're in the Middle-place, now. Here, you are the Concept of You. You are what you think you are. Recognize this, and the world will amplify and react to the faintest impulses of your soul. Reach out." 

After a long pause, Asuka raised her other arm and reached for the cool, flat stone, but the little girl swatted it away. "Not like that. You reach like a person, but the person is dead. Or almost. Reach with your soul." 

Asuka clenched her eyes as her fingers trembled, outstretched, brushing the rock face. She gasped and struggled for what seemed like hours, but only shrieked as her handhold cracked and began to crumble. She pictured herself reaching forward, fusing her fingertips to the stone, and from there finding purchase once more. Her head spun, and she wanted to vomit, but She saw herself pushing herself up with her hands, dusting herself off as she straightened, upright on her feet, and then... 

Asuka was. 

Asuka gulped in huge mouthfuls of air, still terrified. "I can't believe I just did that!" She could still recognize the outcrop she clung to just moments before, although it was hard to believe they were the same. Standing on it, like the girl was-is, she saw the dozens of other possible handholds she could have chosen but were hidden by her position. 

"Here, in the Middle-place, you can do anything you think. Reality is shaped by human will; by your will, if you want. Reality is subjective." For the first time, the girl smiled up at her, but again, Asuka saw her own face looking back at her. 

"I'm dead, aren't I?" Asuka asked again. 

The girl reached out and held Asuka's fingertips in her too-small hand. "You don't seem happy to see me."

"I'm just not sure whether I believe in you. Whether you're real." Asuka pulled her hand back, let the girl's hand go. "I saw you, after I saw my mother," she said. "They say that, when you die, you relive your life through your eyes." 

The child nodded. "That is what they say." 

"I was shot. Several times, in fact, and I remember that, even though it seems so long ago. I lost consciousness and died," Asuka continued. "And I- everything I saw... Shinji, Maya, Aoba and sensei... and my mother... All were just the hallucinations of my still-dying human mind. My brain's just trying to cope with the unimaginable horror of death. 

"You," Asuka said, firmly, "are simply an artifact concocted by my dying brain." 

"And yet I persist," the girl said. She started to fade and grow translucent, disappear against the rocky backdrop of the cliff. "Assuming all you've said is true... how can you relive your life, as you say, if I am from your future? 

"Think on that, mother," the little girl said with a grin, and disappeared once more. 


	25. Priorities

NERV Headquarters

Three Hours Later

"Angels," Shigeru Aoba said quietly to himself, though his voice carried throughout the darkened Logistics Room. His grave expression was lit from underneath by the soft glow of the three-dimensional hologram before him, which featured a scaled relief map of western Japan.

The news had come right after electricity had been returned to the underground fortress and caused a massive panic through the already-shocked survivors. It had taken a long time to calm them down, and even then it was only after agreeing to relocate them deeper into the headquarters' bowels.

"As crippled as we are…," Shigeru began, but cut himself off with a tired shake of the head. "Unbelieveable. I thought we were finished with them."

"We WERE finished with them," Makoto Hyuuga said, beside him. "Everything had gone exactly as foretold in the Dead Sea Scrolls. There were seventeen Angels in all, ending with Kaworu Nagisa... the Fifth Child."

Shinji looked up at the mention of his friend's name. "But… all of the Evangelions are gone, aren't they? All of the mass-produced Evangelions were destroyed—Asuka and I could see them when we were down by the lake. Eva-00 is destroyed; same with Eva-02. And Eva-01…."

"—Eva-01 can be retrieved," Maya Ibuki said, referring to her laptop computer. "We've traced its signal to the center of the lake, where Shigeru found you two." She looked up and regarded everyone with a flat expression. "Our resources are strained enough as it is keeping us alive down here. It's not like we can all of a sudden do a search and rescue for one of the Evas. We'd need money. Equipment. And ESPECIALLY man power," she listed off her fingers.

"But, like I said, we're in no position for any missions," Maya said again.

The room fell silent for a moment as everyone stared at the Angels, represented on the map by four massive energy spikes that appeared to be roaming in seemingly-random directions from each other.

"People," Shinji said after a moment. "What about the other survivors out there?"

Shigeru laughed. "Shinji-kun, we'd been scouring the city for exactly that, before we saw your little smoke signal and saw you, Asuka-chan and your professor the day before. You three are the only ones we've been able to find."

"But—if we three made it, then others must have, too!"

"It's a probability," Maya said, "but I wouldn't count on it."

"Why not?"

Maya Ibuki typed a few keystrokes into her laptop, and the hologrid map quickly changed to a giant screen image displayed on the massive projector beneath their feet. Instead of showing a map of Japan, Shinji stared at live footage of a giant conical structure built out of concrete. Winds whipped debris past the camera as huge plumes of ivory-white steam made a pillar connecting from the earth to a furious-looking sea of storm clouds.

"This is the current situation at the nuclear reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, in Niigata Prefecture. That's just one of the few stations still standing, whose cameras are still operational and accessible. After the Third Impact, nearly all of the 53 nuclear reactors in Japan had meltdowns."

"Oh my god," someone in the room exhaled. Shinji didn't know; his eyes were locked on the horrendous destruction before him.

Maya Ibuki nodded. "Exactly. Normally, the plants are fully automated, and can theoretically run with a minimal staff for 24 hours. The Third Impact, however, changed all that. With no one to monitor the stations, they've almost all blown up. Even if there were survivors scattered throughout Japan—or even the world—the scenario is the same everywhere."

"Either the Third Impact killed them, or something else did," Makoto said.

Maya turned her head away, and slowly nodded.

The room fell silent, save the cold hum of the holographic displays. The air suddenly felt thick and heavy, like a blanket of moroseness wrapped about them. Slowly, Shinji stepped forward, casting the video feed of the nuclear station's fall-out aftermath across his face.

"We...," he began, and paused, swallowing audibly. At his sides, his hands balled into white-knuckled fists. "We shouldn't give up yet. They should be our first priority!

"There must be more survivors! Otherwise...fighting them, fighting the Angels, what's the point of it at all?" Shinji glared at everyone in the lightless room, daring them to meet his gaze.


End file.
